




















^ H "Ct. 



^ 



LUCK 



OF A 



WANDERING 
DANE. 

BY 
HANS LYKKE<LEGER. 



PRICE, 25 Cents. 



FOR SALE BY ALL NEWSDEALERS. 



FROMi 
533 CB 






P. O. BOX 754, 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. My Father and my Mother and Myself, ... 5 

II. I Bind and Unbind Myself, 9 

III. A Life on the Ocean Wave, 15 

IV. To Brazil and Keturn, 18 

V. More Trouble Afloat and Ashore, .... 24 

VI. Another Turn of, and at, the Wheel, ... 29 

VII. In Brazil. All Sorts of Luck, 36 

VIII. Cruising on Shore, 42 

IX. Fresh and Salt, 46 

X. Sundry Shore and Sore Situations, ... 50 

XI. The Luck is Mixed, 58 

XII. Still on the Down Grade, 56 

XIII. A Good Samaritan, 59 

XIV. I'Listfora"Sodger," 62 

XV. Of Battles, Bullets, Bayonets and Blood, ... 66 

XVI. To Denmark and Back, 69 

XVII. More Variations on the Old Tune, .... 72 

XVIII. New Trials, Trials and Tribulations, ... 77 

XIX. Out of the Blue and into Business, .... 81 

XX. The Peculiarities and Philosophy of Peddling, . 84 

XXI. Down to the Bottom Again, 88 

XXII. Picking up a Little, 91 

XXIII. On the Frontier, 04 

XXIV. Frontier Fights and Fancies, 96 

XXV. Dreams and Kealities, 98 

XXVI. Trying a Turn as Teamster, 101 

XXVII. Speculations, Struggles and Scant Success, . . 105 

XXVIII. Money, Mother, and Matrimony, .... 107 

XXIX. A Square Knock Down, .108 

XXX. "Never Say Die, Boys," 112 

XXXI. On the Platform at Ogden, 113 

XXXII. Copious, Curious, Comical, Courtships, . . . 118 

XXXIII. A Perplexed Policeman, 122 

XXXIV. AllO. K., . . 125 

XXXV. Good, 127 

XXXVI. Better, 128 

XXXVII. Best— and Last, 129 



LUCK 



OF A 



WANDERING 

DANE. 



IIAXS LYKKEJJEGER. 






I 

[Native of Denmark, Citizen of the United States.] 

Soldier and Sailor, Moulder and Merchant, Tramp and Trader, Soap-boiler 
and Scribe, Peddler and Philosopher, Overseer and Understrapper, 
Jack-of-all -trades and Master of Fortune. 




Dedicated to 

NOBODY, 

For the Benefit of 

EVERYBODY. 

PUBLISHER'S ADDRESS, 

"t« "umSaT UU «'** ^^^ > P ' °" BOX 754 ' 

OF oo NQ ress PHILADELPHIA, 

.885. PA. 



MATLACK a HARVFY, PRINTERS. 224-'2S S. FIFTH ST., PHILA. 



COPYRIGHTED 



\ 
\ 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



CT2J5 



INTRODUCTORY. 



(which it will be well to read, though it may be "skipped.") 

I write and publish this True History of the Early Portion of My Life, 
because it pleases me so to do. 

What moral the reader finds in it, is supplied gratis, and can be applied 
at pleasure. 

I believe that the story of every man's life, for thirty years, conveys 
lessons and warnings of value to his fellow creatures. 

I adopt a nom de plume; in certain cases the names of persons and 
localities are changed in order to prevent identification and there all fic- 
tion ends. 

All the adventures, mishaps, incidents and details, set down in this book 
are the true, actual experiences of the single individual who narrates them. 

I am sure that, after reading my story, no one will charge me with a 
desire to glorify, or make myself appear a better man than I am, or to cover 
up my sins. 

The strange vicissitudes of my life might have crowded upon any other 
man, I only tell my story and believe that it proves that "Truth is stranger 
than Fiction." 

There is much herein recorded that I tell with sorrow; but I deter- 
mined when starting this work to tell the truth and I have adhered to that 
resolution even when it laid bare my most serious offences. I have, in later 
years, earnestly tried to do my duty in every particular, to make what 
amends I could for former sins. I have not to look to man for forgiveness 
and remission. 

I have attempted no elegance of style, have copied no man's literary 
peculiarities in my work; that the story will prove interesting, if only from 
its strange and varied incidents I am certain; of its absolute truth I am 
anxious to convince by renewed assurance. 
I am, very respectfully, 

The Public's obedient servant, 

Hans Lykkej^ger. 






LUCK 

OF A WANDERING DANE. 



BY 

HANS LYKKEJ^EGEK. 



[Native of Denmark, Citizen of the United States.] 

Soldier and bailor, Moulder and Merchant, Tramp and Trader, Soap-boiler 

and Scribe, Peddler and Philosopher, Overseer and Understrapper, 

Jack of all-trades and Master of Fortune. 

Dedicated to 

NOBODY 

For the Benefit of 

EVERYBODY. 

CHAPTER I. 

MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER AND MYSELF. 

That I was born, I am prepared to present positive prima facie proof 
in about 250 lbs. avoidupois, of what I sometimes, in summer, consider 
much "too solid flesh." 

For the benefit of those who may, after reading these pages, desire to 
make a pilgrimage to the scene of my nativity, and for the information of 
future historians, I state with the utmost precision of date and detail, that 
I came into this world of vanity and vexation of spirit, in the cottage of 
my father, situated in the town of Knusbol, Parish of Jaarop ; near King 
river, eight miles from Kolding Castle, close by the battle ground of Queen 
Margaret, in Juteland, Kingdom of Denmark ; hour, 8 A.M. ; day, Thurs- 
day 5 date, February 4th ; year, 1841. 

I hear individuals of the present time, who are inclined to slang, say, 
"It is a cold day when I get left." It certainly was a very cold day 
" when I got left," for the first time in the welcoming arms of my happy 
mother. The howling winter winds were whistling and the snow flakes 
falling thick and fast about the humble home of my parents, and the storm 
had been raging for days. When my father was called upon to sally forth 
for the assistance always deemed necessary, if available, upon such critical 
occasions, he found the doors and windows so blocked by the snow drifts 
that he was forced to make his exit up and through the chimney, and to 
struggle almost as hard for his life outside as I fought and gasped for my 
own within. 

I do not state these facts, or events immediately subsequent, from per- 
sonal observations made by myself at the time; the information is derived 
from my mother, who was present throughout the entire proceedings, and 
I have no reason to doubt the reliability of the record. 



In /act, I was more a dead baby than a live one, and for the first few 
days of my existence my battle for life against adverse physical circum- 
stances was fully as hard as the right for a living proved in after years. I 
was a poor inanimate chunk of mortality, without voice sufficient to pipe 
a greeting for the anxious mother's ears, or strength sufficient to strike out, 
after the manner of most babies, with wild, red lumps of fists and feet, as 
though striving to swim in and against the " sea of troubles " into which 
I had been pitched ; and the religious belief of my parents causing them to 
consider baptism necessary to salvation, the minister was summoned at 
almost the same moment as the midwife, that my safety in the next world 
might be insured providing I took a hasty departure therefor. "Whether it 
was the christening ceremony or some wise woman decoction turned the 
scale in favor of my remaining upon this planet, I cannot say, but, — I didn't 
die. 

My father was a blacksmith, the prize son of Vulcan in that section of 
his country. Nature had been in a most liberal mood, when she distribu- 
ted the materials for his manufacture and 
his brawny bulk was distributed over six 
feet, two inches of longitude. Upon an 
equally lavish scale of anatomical archi- 
tecture was my good mother erected, and 
she, after the old fashioned maimer of 
wives in those days and regions, gave 
willing, steady and valuable aid at the 
forge and all craft work, to my smith-fa- 
ther. If I inherited nothing else from my 
immediate progenitors, the great, robust 
body which has withstood many rough 
buffettings, and the solid, sound head, 
even though it be somewhat thick, which 
has forced its way through heavy opposi- 
tion, are endowments which have proved 
more valuable to me than coin and land, 
and for which I have learned to hold them 
in grateful remembrance. 

Once I had grappled a hold on exis- 
tence, I grew strong and lusty, and in a 
few months was able to prove that my 
lungs were in primest of working order 
and my voice possessed of as much power 
as it had not sweetness ; and swaddled, 
the big smith. in a modified form, not unlike an Indian 

pappoose, as is the custom of the country, in bandages that prevented all 
action of my lower limbs, I made up in vocal exercise for the constraint 
placed upon my well rounded legs. 

When I was two years of age my father died, and with four children, 
I being the youngest, to provide garments and grub for, my mother was 
forced to exert her strength, mental and physical, to the utmost. She 
endeavored, for a time, to continue the blacksmithing trade as before, 
which her expertness in the craft rendered her perfectly competent to do, 
but to meet all demands at the forge and give the necessary attention to the 




iiQB M; *"~ 




YOURS TRULY 

dampened her spirit 



many wants of such a family of noisy, mischievous youngters, was entirely 
too great a task even for her ; she disposed of the workshop and its imple- 
ments and removed to her native town Nyborg. 
In the place of her birth my mother started 
bravely to earn a livelihood for herself and little 
ones by peddling fish. No light or easy work was 
hers ; buying the scaly commodity from boats, 
in the town, she placed them in an immense 
basket which was strapped upon her back and, 
bearing her heavy burden over rough roads and 
long miles, through wind or storm, cold or heat, 
mud or dust, she tramped into and through the 
interior country, trading the fish for produce, 
ladened with which she would return to the town 
and there convert her barter into cash. 

This is the way my Danish mother toiled for 
and supported her children; hard work never 
subdued her courage, or dulled her keen woman's 
wit, and in 1848, during the Danish-Prussian War, when my brave little 
mother-country held its own and "conquered a 
peace" with the powerful invaders, her business 
aptitude developed itself and she secured a con- 
tract to supply food, and cook for, one thousand 
soldiers, and with such wisdom and system did 
she conduct her business, that after fulfilling 
„ every obligation to the satisfaction of all con- 
\ cerned, the settlement of accounts left a balance 
/ on the right side of the books, which amounted 
to a considerable fortune in that country and 
raised her considerably in the social scale. 

Blessed with a competence which secured her 
from want, my mother, though never idle, for, as 
the saying is, "there was not a lazy bone in her 
body," did not return to the laborious fish and 
produce packing. She speculated in a quiet way, 
in goods and property, and continually increased 
her store. Although she was at that time a 
buxom, healthy beauty of a woman, I feel sure, 
speaking from the light gained by my mature 
experience, that every additional hundred dollars 
added in her bank book, heightened her attrac- 
tions and decreased the number of her years in 
the estimation of mankind; at all events the 
wealthy widow had plenty of suitors for her 
hand (and what would be in it). That blind 
little villain, Paddy Cupid, prosecutes his 
archery practice in Denmark with the same disregard of fitness and com- 
mon sense which marks his indiscriminate shooting and hitting all the 
world over ; he managed to get astride of my good, big mother's handsome 
nose and blinded the eyes of her understanding with his soft wings, until 
she finally accepted, for better or worse, one of his recruits as successor to 



fe? 




MOTHER. 



8 



my father. As is too often the case, her choice proved decidedly "for the 
worse;" a good-looking, dashing fellow of a spendthrift took possession 
of the widow, family and fortune. It required but twelve months' time 
for him to squander the hard earnings that three years of weary toil had 
accumulated; then he left us and after a time my mother procured a 
divorce, though every now and again he would make his appearance, poor 
and penitent, destitute and dolorous, and make his peace until he had re- 
filled and refitted, when he would again take himself off until necessity 
obliged him to repeat the performance. This continued for seven years, 
when he died from the effects of dissipation. 

The year 1850 found my mother sadly impoverished from the cause 
mentioned; with characteristic energy she applied herself to the task of re- 
building her fortune ; but the scene of her past prosperity had become 
distasteful to her and she removed to near Gram, in Schlesvie, where, in a 
roadside inn, to which was attached a few acres of ground, she devoted 
herself to the cultivation of business and crops with her usual vigor and 
moderate success. 

At this place I was entered at and supposed to attend the country school. 
I was nearly ten years of age and such a solid "chunk of a boy," that 
Stumpy, Shorty, Fatty, and like impertinent references to my personal 
appearance and peculiarities, were the names by which I was commonly 
saluted, much to my disgust. My attendance at school and my habits of 
study were decidedly irregular, and though I contrived in some way to pick 
up the rudiments of knowledge : the three ITs, " 'readin', 'ritin ' and 'rith- 
metic," yet the actual manner of such acquisition is a mystery which I 
cannot even at this time explain. 

An attempt to educate me while at Nyborg had most signally failed, 
for at t<hat place the institutions of learning were still in use as military 
hospitals; soldiers and men-of- wars-men were as yet numerous about the 




SCHOOL HOURS. 



9 

fortifications and in the harbor, and days and hours, when I should have 
been gathering wisdom at the school desk, I passed among the wearers of 
uniforms and blue jackets who varied the monotony of their life by making 
of me a pet, errand boy, foot ball and shuttle cock. One of my favorite 
amusements was to slide down or be dragged down the glassy slope of the 
fort, a performance productive of such disastrous results to the rear section 
of my breeches that my mother, tired of the incessant patching with cloth, 
re-seated, or half -soled, the seat of my garment with leather, and thus fur- 
nished material for an additional offensive nick-name to my persecutors. 

Dealing in potations and digging potatoes soon proved too monotonous 
for one of such active temperament as my mother, so she disposed of her 
business and property, moving once more, this time to Apenrade, a town 
celebrated for ship building, where she opened a small hotel, accommodating' 
citizens with board, lodgings and refreshments. 

CHAPTER II. 
I BIND AND UNBIND MYSELF. 

" Why don't you put him to work ? " said one. 

" He ought to be learning a trade ! " said twenty. 

" Make that big, lazy cub earn his bread ! " said a hundred. 

" That boy will be ruined if he don't get a master ! " said everybody. 

Such was the burden of the song that was sounded in my mother's 
ears, day and night, by all the innumerable choir of friends, acquaintances 
and gossips that, in Apenrade, as in all other places, were very willing to 
attend to the business, and arrange all matters for everybody but them- 
selves. 

I had almost reached the age of fourteen years, and was certainly big 
enough, old enough, and ugly enough, to begin to scratch gravel and hunt 
worms for myself. I was not lazy or unwilling to work, but I was slow 
and could not at once conclude what trade, business or profession I would 
honor by devoting to it my abilities and life. I was, maybe, like the man 
who said that he " must have a great deal of mind, it took him so long to 
make it up." 

However, my mother's and my own opinion at length began to run on 
a line with the oft and gratis expressed advice of outside friends and busy- 
bodies, and after due consideration, I notified and horrified my mother by 
announcing my desire and intention to be a doctor, and requested her to 
furnish me the necessary funds and opportunity for study. 

" A doctor ! " cried she, with hands uplifted at my presumption, "a 
pretty doctor you would make ! And where do you suppose the money is 
to come from to pay for making you a doctor ? " - 

"I supposed you had it, and would give it to me," answered I. 

" You did, did you ? " she replied ; " when you do, for a wonder, get 
an idea into that thick skull of yours, why don't you try to get a sensible 
one there ? " 

" Well, I want to be a doctor, anyhow," I persisted ; " if you can't 
give me the money, that's the end of it." 

"Suppose I could and would give you the money, how am I to give 
you the brains, you donner-head ! Do you think I have a supply of brains 
in the drawer, or the bank, or put away in a stocking to hand out to you 



10 

like bits of money ? No, no, my lad, you'll be no doctor with my con- 
sent or making. I don't want it on my conscience, or to have yoa hung 
for poisoning any fool of a patient that would take medicine of your order- 
ing. No doctor for you, sir, choose a trade." 

Finally, understanding that I must abandon all hope of learning the 
medical profession, I was, by my own choice, apprenticed to learn mould- 
ing in an iron foundry. Why I selected that particular trade I cannot 
tell, unless it were from some vague mental connection between burying 
the patterns as a moulder, and doing the same f 01 patients as a doctor ; but 
go to the iron foundry I did though I had no decided inclination for that 
or any other craft work. Nature never intended me for mechanical pro- 
duction. I can fully appreciate, understand, apply and manage machinery, 
but to build it or any portion of it, I am unlit. 

I did not apply myself very diligently to mastering the mysteries of the 
moulder's art, and even had I been disposed and eager to learn, the oppor- 
tunity was not afforded me in the place to which I was apprenticed. I was 
at the foundry all day, no eight or ten hour law there or then, and attended 
school at night, but my "business" hours were employed with malt instead 
of mould, intoxicants in place of iron. 

Boy's boy was I, a beer-burdened beast, a brandy-wein jug-jerking 
jackass. At beck and call, whistle, nod, or gentle hint (such as a tool or 
other missile throw r n at my head), of every other employee of the works, I 
had to seize the empty beer or rum mug, can, jug or bottle, and rush to 
the tavern to have them filled, returning and delivering them to some of 
my multitude of masters only to start off again on the same errand for 
others. 

My excursions back and forth were many, repeated and continuous; 
my efforts to please, I own, were not incited either by love of the work or 
those who imposed it upon me, and I did not always, or even occasionally, 
afford entire satisfaction to my task masters; but my pay was prompt, very; 
and plenty, exceeding and over-plenteous; though it was in a coin I neither 
coveted or demanded, in fact would willingly dispensed with; it was the 
remuneration generally given a young bear, " more kicks than half -pence," 
curses and hard names being thrown in with reckless extravagance. 

" Stupid ! " — "Fool ! " — "Lazy Brute ! " — and pet names of like char- 
acter were showered upon me with a liberality only exceeded by the 
bestowal of the kicks, cuffs and blow^s which were rained down with 
unstudied impartiality, which could be reached by the foot, fist or missile 
of the petty tyrants whose unhappy slaye I was. 

Forty men were always employed at this foundry and the hands were 
constantly changing, and for two years I was compelled to be the recipient 
of all the malicious and cruel persecutions which hundreds of brutalized 
natures could invent or learn one from the other, and to suffer all the 
tortures that drunken barbarity could inflict upon a defenceless object. 

Two years I remained at this place and during that entire time I did 
not see a single employee in the foundry who was not addicted to over- 
indulgence in intoxicating liquors. The pay of a journeyman moulder, 
then and there, was about seventy-five cents per day; at piece work he 
could earn a dollar in the same time; boarding was but $1.25 per week and 
other necessaries in proportion. Beer could be purchased for what was 
equivalent to two cents of American money, a quart ; I would mention 



11 



however, in order to prevent a possible migration of an army of beer lovers 
to Denmark, on account of the low figure above quoted, that prices have 




LEARNING MY TRADE. 

raised since the time of which I write, and through Bismarkian taxation 
that seductive beverage averages there in cost as much as it does in the 
land of the Star Spangled Banner. 

Moulding in a foundry, in those days of Denmark, was considered the 
best paid mechanic's work in the kingdom, yet, through intemperance and 
improvidence, such was the poverty of these moulders, whose wages, 
wisely used, would have enabled them to live in comfort ; that among the 
unmarried men it was common to make one decent coat serve three or four 
— one of the party, arrayed in the presentable garment, being the only rep- 
resentative of the lot who could appear at the Club meeting or in public on 
Sunday, the other partners having to keep in close quarters and shirt 
sleeves or their old rags until their turn arrived to use the good coat. 

For the first twelve months of my apprenticeship, I was paid at the 
rate of fourteen cents a day, out of which sum I was obliged to furnish 
my own food and clothing ; my income was certainly not calculated to 
lead me into riotous living, but trifling as was the amonnt I have seen 



I 2 

many days, after my arrival at man's estate, when I would gladly have 
toiled hard all day for even that sum. My wages were increased to twenty 
cents per day for the second year, and would have been advanced at the 
rate of ten cents per diem for each of my remaining years of apprentice- 
ship until at the end of my five years' servitude, I would have been receiving 
three dollars per week. 

But two years of misery, constant abuse and heart-sickness, caused by 
the besotted condition of those by whom I was every and all day sur- 
rounded, so disgusted me with the life I was leading that I resolved to cut 
loose from it and all its belongings. In my heart and head, even though 
the one was considered as particularly sluggish and the other as being 
unusually thick, I had, born within me, or unknowingly acquired, 
thoughts and feelings which caused me to shrink from my then contact, 
and though I had been called " stupid fool " and considered as such, until 
I almost concluded I was one, I determined that I would not sink to the 
brutal level of those about me. I felt an ambition stirring within me to 
prove that the wisdom of the fool was better than the folly of those who 
considered themselves as wise men, and I mustered all of that quality 
which in me, then, was called obstinacy, pig-headedness and other choice 
names of contempt, the same characteristics which, in a youth more fortu- 
nately situated, or of higher social standing, would be dignified as firmness, 
courage, etc. , I gathered together all of this that was in my nature, and 
proceeded to interview and astonish my master. 

When I approached the proprietor of the foundry, #nd quietly but 
decidedly asked that I might see my articles of apprenticeship, the man's 
face would have answered as a picture of Balaam's when that ancient indi- 
vidual's donkey addressed words of wisdom to him. 

" Wha ! wha ! wha-t ! " he spluttered, "what's that you say ? " 

I repeated my request. 

" Want to see your contract ! Would like to look over your articles ! 
You fool ! You ass ! You double-doubled dunder head ! What do you 
mean ? " 

" I want to see,'* said I, "if in my articles of apprenticeship there was 
put anything that made me to be a slave to all the drunken workmen in 
your foundry, and to take all the kicks and plows they saw fit to give me ; 
that's what I mean." 

"Oh! that's it, is it ; only that. Well, I'll soon show you," roared 
the old head tyrant, and with the curses, coming thick and fast, he kept 
time with his fists upon my unlucky head and body, continuing his lively 
illustration of what it was my duty to be, to do, and to suffer, until my 
anger and indignation got the better of discipline and subordination and I 
determined that the game should not be all on one side. 

He was a great, powerful man, but I was a good sized, stout boy, and 
had not received so many hard knocks without learning how to give back 
some of the same in return ; so at last I struck out boldly in my own be- 
half, and fought with a desperate determination which, added to his sur- 
prise at my resistance, rendered it no easy matter for him to handle me, 
and there was the liveliest kind of a fight, in which the victory of course 
was on the side of the strongest, but when we were separated, and that 
only through the intervention of his big wife, who clawed my face and 



13 



gathered handf uls of my hair ; he had plenty of bruises to rub, and pains 
to groan over, as well as myself. 




EXPLAINING MY INDENTURES. 

There was a terrible tempest in the family tea-pot when I went, bat- 
tered and tattered, home to my mother and reported that I neither could or 
would remain longer at the foundry and submit to such treatment as I had 
for two years endured. Here was rebellion indeed ; the traditions of the 
land, laws of the country, society and family were all outraged by this 
"donner headed fool" who had impudence to insist that being kicked, 
cuffed and cursed, with the continual carrying of rum and beer for human 
brutes, would not learn him the trade of moulding, and could not be con- 
sidered as part and portion of a regular apprenticeship. 

My mother, good, sensible woman though she was, had the old fash- 
ioned ideas regarding as obligatory the perfect submission in mind and 
body, of the servant to the master. To spare the blow, she thought, was 
to spoil the boy, and she could understand no other system. Consolation 
for the curses showered upon me by the irate master she gave me in a tor- 
rent of Danish "jawing," and though I am certain that she had never 



14 

heard of the homoepathic theory that "like cures like," her remedy for the 
bruises under which I was smarting, was a liberal application of a stout, 
strong broom-stick, with which she whacked me until she was tired, and 
I was worse sore than ever and I roared for quarter. 

" You've broke my back I " I howled, as I rubbed and squirmed. 

"You've broke my heart ! " gasped she, gathering her breath and un- 
decided whether to give me another dose of the broom handle, or to have 
a good cry for her own relief. 

" I've been father and mother to you ; I've toiled and slaved to bring 
you up," she cried, and her words were true ; " and you've disgraced your- 
self and me, and all your family, and you're trying to ruin yourself and 
kill me." 

I protested that I had no intention of doing either. 

"You will go back to your master and beg his pardon, and ask him 
not to put you in jail as he could and ought to, and beg him to take you 
back and promise to obey him in all things. That's what you will do at 
once." 

" I won't !" said I. 

" You will ! " said she, and grabbed again for the broomstick. 

" I won't ! " said I, taking care at the same time to keep out of reach 
of the weapon. 

" I won't ! " I yelled, as I shot out of the door. 

And I did'nt go back. 

Every time I ventured near my mother, for days after my retirement 
from trade, I received her positive orders to report and submit to my old 
master, but I stuck to my determination not to do so, and again the 
tongues of the old gossips wagged in prophecies of my final and ignomin- 
ious fate. I not only was "a fool, a natural born fool," they said, but I was 
also an abandoned ruffian of the most desperate character, who had 
assaulted and nearly killed my master and his wife, two perfect creatures, 
in amiability and generosity akin to angels. That I would certainly be 
hung, provided I didn't starve to death through laziness, before the time 
came for killing me with a rope, every one of these old croakers was fully 
convinced. 

At last my mother realized that under no compulsion would I return 
to the foundry, and began to consult me as to my future movements. I 
informed her that I had made up my mind to go to sea, and then there was 
another scene of reproaches, objections and refusals on her part, and 
stormy, stolid obstinacy on mine. Constant droppings, however, wear 
away a stone, and my continual reiteration that I would go to sea finally 
broke down her determination never to consent to such a step, and she 
unwillingly gave me her permission to try the life of a sailor. 

To get to the sea required that I should find a captain willing to 
receive me on board his ship, and though that town then turned out more 
sailor boys than any other port in Denmark, my big, clumsy body and well- 
known reputation as a stupid, stubborn, unmanageable cub, did not cause 
the skippers of the harbor to show extra anxiety to secure my valuable 
services and my efforts to obtain a place on any kind of a craft were 
unavailing, though I hunted and applied most industriously. 

Nothing daunted by the ill-success of my applications to the unappre- 
ciative captains of my home port, I concluded that what could not be done 



15 



there might be effected elsewhere, so with my mother's tears, kisses and 
blessing, I started off to find a ship and fortune. My available cash con- 
sisted of two Danish dollars, my ward- 
robe was bundled in a pocket-handker- 
chief, and was light as my heart the 
morning I bid "good-bye" to my sole 
parent and started off for Copenhagen. 

My mother had given me her con- 
sent and nothing else, this was through 
no unkindness on her part. She thought 
that if I had not the means for an ex- 
tended stay in a strange city, and did 
I not succeed in finding a place on a vessel, 
f I would quickly return to my home and 
' be satisfied to remain there, but in order 
* to insure my comfort, she privately fur- 
!Ljl^ nished the captain with whom I took 
passage, a considerable sum of money to 
^ be supplied me, if necessary, to keep me 
'# from want ; all this, however, I did not 
know at the time. 

Half of my cash, one dollar, I paid 
for my passage upon a sloop bound for 
Copenhagen, and on August 27th, 1857, 
I turned my back upon my home to fight 
the battle of life in the big world, for 
myself. 




fej* 



OFF TO SEA. 



CHAPTER III. 



A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE. 

I was fully aware that the dollar remaining of my cash capital would 
not long support me in Copenhagen and idleness. Health, strength and 
willingness to work I possessed, and grappling the first that offered, I for 
days after my arrival, earned my bread by the sweat of my brow, as a 
laborer on the wharves of the city, trying continually in every spare 
moment to obtain a place on a vessel. 

I had too much pride or mulishness, to write to my mother, telling her 
of my ill-success and asking for money to keep me there or enable me to 
return home. Had I known of the provision she had, in her kind thought- 
fulness, made for me, I might have applied to the captain of the sloop for 
the money she had placed in his hands and have made use of it, but as I 
was in ignorance of her action, I stuck to the heavy labor I had secured 
and grinned and bore it. Go back home, I determined I would not. 

The fact that I had never been to sea, my clumsy, overgrown appear- 
ance, and the absence of a pass or permit from the authorities of my home 
town, without which no one in Denmark can enter into any legitimate 
business or avocation elsewhere, all combined to prevent me from securing 
the employment I desired, and it was ten days or more before I received 
the precious and necessary document from Apenrade. With this official 
guarantee that I was not a criminal or runaway, and license to work,^£ 



16 

started once more, with renewed hope and vigor, in search of a chance 
' ' to plough the roaring main. ' ' 

How to reef, haul and steer I knew as little of, as I did of tight rope 
dancing or Greek, but I was not particular regarding the rank in which I 
entered the marine service, and when at last I found the skipper of a Hol- 
land schooner, "Albertino," who was not prejudiced against me by my 
unpromising exterior, and who offered me twelve Danish dollars (equal to 
six of the same named American coin) a month, to go as cook upon his 
vessel, I jumped at the situation, and considered myself a made man. 

I was ignorant of cooking as of navigation, and was honest enough to 
confess the same to the captain, but that worthy man, not having the fear 
of a terrible death by dyspepsia, or poison before his eyes, consoled me by 
informing me that with patience and perseverance and instruction, incul- 
cated through the medium of freely given and frequent ' ' lickings, ' ' I should 
soon graduate a most accomplished and scientific chef & cuisine. 

Though my experience of meat and potatoes was confined entirely to 
devouring them when, properly prepared, they were placed before me, and 
all I knew about coffee was to gulp it down from a cup, yet I tackled the 
mysteries of the cook's galley with a hearty good will ; the patience and 
perseverance were stock in my nature and the " lickings " had been such 
a large element in my past life and labor that I considered them a most 
necessary and inevitable accompaniment of any subordinate position, so 
the promised liberality in that particular was no very disturbing influence 
in my mind, as my back, indeed, my whole body had become almost in- 
sensible to any commonly powerful blows. Familiarity in this, as in other 
matters, was productive of contempt. 

It was on a Sunday morning when I first assumed my new dignity and 
officiated as high priest of the cook's galley. I was told to put the pot on 
the fire preparatory to making soup ; I so did. I ventured, likewise to fill 
the pot with water, and after it commenced to boil I felt that I was mak- 
ing headway rapidly. That the meat and vegetables furnished me were, 
somehow, to be put in the pot and finally resolved into soup for the stom- 
achs of the hungry sailors, I was also aware, but the manner of such in- 
troduction and combination was an unsolved problem in my mind. But I 
boldly plunged the fruits of the earth into the pot and they boiled, and 
boiled, and boiled, until about 11 o'clock, when, thinking I had better not 
trust too much to luck, I reported progress to the captain. 

" The vegetables are in the pot, sir, and have been boiling hard for 
about two hours. Can I now put in the meat ? " 

The captain could speak no Danish, but as I was able to jabber a little 
of the low German, or Holland Dutch, and to understand it fairly, I was 
able to communicate with him. 

His reply to this my first official communication and application for in- 
struction, he delegated to the mate, and that worthy proceeded at once to 
initiate me into the secrets of soup manufacture through the medium of a 
rope end, with which he forcibly and strikingly illustrated the accom- 
panying lecture, until I was rescued by the kindly interposition of the cap- 
tain's wife, who good naturedly took upon herself my work for that day, 
while I served as pupil and dishwasher, much to the satisfaction of myself 
and the crew, an eatable dinner being enjoyed in consequence, which it 



17 



would most certainly not have been had its preparation depended upon 
my efforts. 

The next day was " Bean-day," and when the materials were fur- 
nished me, my instructress gave me careful directions as to their cooking, 
the captain and mate supplementing her lesson by informing me that if 
any or all of the beans were burned, all the calcined were to be eaten by 
me, and that it would be their duty, which they'd certainly not neglect, to 
see that I did so devour them. I regret to record that, not only upon the 
occasion of which I write, but upon many subsequent, I was forced to feed 
upon burnt beans to an extent far beyond my appetite and my natural re- 
ceptive capacity, and in consequence of such enforced surfeit in that par- 
ticular article of diet, I utterly loath the sight, smell and taste of beans to 
this day. That Heaven had provided their food, and that their cook had 
been sent from an exactly opposite locality, was the frequent and publicly 
expressed opinion of all the honest mariners upon the Albertino for many a 
day after I had entered upon my duties as ship's cook. 

We sailed in ballast from Copenhagen for Hermngsand, Sweden, to 
load with lumber. On entering the Baltic Sea, I first experienced the 
agonies of that terrible malady, sea-sickness; under its depressing influ- 
ence, if I was worthless as a cook before, I was worth nothing as anything 
after it had once taken a grip upon me. I was a useless cumberer of the 
deck, and to get rid, so far as possible, of my body and bulk, they dumped 
me down into the hold amongst the ballast, to all of which I was totally 
indifferent, my only feeling being fear I might have to live some hours 
more in agony. It seemed to me that I "thro wed up " each and every 
portion of niy internal economy, and I would have cheerfully "throwed 
up " my prized position as ship's cook, and walked ashore, had such a pro- 
ceeding been possible. 

After "affliction sore long time I bore," by advice of some of the 

crew, I adopted the regular nautical 
remedy, simple but effective, which con- 
sisted of a piece of fat pork attached to 
the end of a stout cord ; the greasy mor- 
sel is swallowed, and then hauled up 
through the channel it descended to the 
surface. Three or four operations of this 
forcastle stomach-pump polished off any 
crumbs remaining in my well evacuated 
interior, and after about twenty-four 
hours of solitary misery upon the ballast, 
I was allowed to transport, as best I 
could, all that was left of me to my bunk ; 
once there, appetite quickly asserted its 
demands, recovery quickly followed, and 
I never again suffered from sea-sickness. 
This course of treatment is not, so far as 
I know, laid down in any regular medi- 
cal work, or prescribed by the faculty, 
but I can bear witness to its prompt and 




JACK'S PRESCRIPTION. 



18 

thorough results and bestow the receipt upon mankind gratuitously. 

Preparing or spoiling food was not the only duty or occupation of my 
life. On board the vessel was the captain and two mates, three seamen 
the captain's wife and myself ; as I shall refer to some of these again, I take 
the trouble to give the census. When not busy in the cook's galley I 
found plenty of other employment ; it was my duty to keep clean the cap- 
tain's cabin, and the forecastle where the sailcdrs bunked, and the table 
service of the crew devolved entirely upon me. As the "ship's boy" I 
had also, in fine weather, to attend to and "make" gallant and jib sails, the 
only light canvas we carried ; our vessel being brigantine rigged. If 1 
failed to u shin up " the ratlines with that celerity which my anxious pre- 
ceptor, the mate, seemed to think it was necessary for me to exhibit in jus- 
tice to his careful training, my movements were hastened by the 
quickening caresses of that ever handy rope 'send, and with it he soon spurred 
my ambition and bodily movements into agile expertness. 

One bright remembrance I havejof those early, days, was the constant 
kindness shown me by the captain's wife, and her influence exerted, in my 
behalf, saved me many interviews with the rope's end, which through ig- 
norance or mischief I fully deserved. She was as good and bold a sailor as 
ever trod a ship's deck, and a skilful navigator, having spent her life in a 
Galliot on the North Sea. In stormy weather she would dress in the oiled 
overhauls and other u duds" of the sailor, as is common among the Hol- 
land women who follow the sea, and would go aloft to furl or reef sail with 
any man on board ; there was not a detail of the ship's working that she 
was not able to perform or superintend. She was a good woman. 

CHAPTEK IV. 

TO BRAZIL AND RETURN. 

In the six weeks occupied by our trip to Sweden, I learned the ropes, 
to handle the sheets, to take my turn at the wheel, and to prepare the food 
sufficiently well to suit the not over fastidious appetites of the sailors, and 
I considered my apprenticeship ended in that profession. 

On our return to Copenhagen, I was agreeably surprised to find that 
my mother was so far reconciled to my new venture in life as to send me a 
trunk containing an abundant outfit of clothing, boots, shoes and all neces- 
sary articles for comfort. I had written her from Sweden, and I found 
this very acceptable evidence of her affection awaiting my arrival. 

Dressed out in my new clothes, I waited upon my captain and notified 
him that I now intended to abandon the pots and pans of the cook's galley, 
to rate myself as A 1, able seaman, to quit his vessel and service and to 
ship as full sailor with another skipper. The honest king of the quarter 
deck once more brought the ponderous guns of his philosophy to bear upon 
the light earthworks of my resolution. He shifted his cud, closed one eye, 
looked me all over, opened his mouth, and spoke these words of wisdom. 

" Look here, lad, don't you go and be a fool all the time, grip on to a 
little common sense once in awhile. You've learned to 'tend sheets, to 
cook grub as well as eat it, to steer, and to take such lickin's as is good 
for your health and necessary for your education. Well, then, now you're 
calculating to desert your ship and me, as has been a father to you, and to 
go into another ship, where you will have to learn the ways of new men, 



19 

and get acquainted with a fresh rope's end as you ain't used to, and a 
mate's list as you don't know the knockin' down power of, and a lot of 
other misfortunes too numerous to mention." 

"Don't you be a fool, don't for just this once ; I'm bound for Marvin, 
Brazil this voyage; content yourself with friends as is like brothers to you 
and come with me to Brazil, where there's all the good things of earth to 
be had for the pickin, and beauties of yaller gals by the hundred. Don't 
you go and be a fool now, and chuck away a chance for to sail in company 
with all the blessin's you've been so lucky as to tumble against, dont you 
doit." 

His argumentative artillery was too much for me, and I signed articles 
to remain with him. 

There were but few incidents worthy of record during our voyage to 
South America, but of those few there is one I will never forget ; it was 
in connection with a game of " hide and seek," in which the crew indulged 
when near " The Line." 

One of the crew was a Norwegian who had gained my friendship and 
confidence by many little acts which showed unusual consideration for my 
greenness, and I trusted him implicitly. This man pretended to make a 
bet with the rest of the crew, that he could hide me where they would 
never find me. At his direction I ensconsed myself in an empty barrel 
•which he covered over with heavy canvas, and on the top of this he placed 
many articles of heavy weight. I was crowded down in these close 
quarters, nearly suffocated but still chuckling gleefully over our success, 
as I heard them running about, making pretence of looking for me, when — 
dash ! splash ! souse ! — half a hogshead of sea water came pouring into my 
nest and I came scrambling out, with eyes, nostrils and mouth filled with 
the briny element, spluttering like a drowned rat. 

Never doubting my friend when he sympathized with me and pro- 
posed another trial, I consented. He then instructed me to throw a rope 
over the bow of the vessel, first making it fast inside, and then to clamber 
down and hang at the end of the line until our shipmates acknowledged 
that they could not find me. The preparations were speedily made, and in 
a few moments I was dangling a few feet above the waves, exulting over 
the success of our scheme, when the rope was suddenly cast loose from 
above, and I found myself struggling in the ocean, while the row of grin- 
ning faces over the ship's side showed that I had been "sold again." I was 
soon drawn up on deck, and through policy, joined in the laugh raised at 
my expense. 

I resolved, however, that the practical jokes should not all be played 
upon one victim, and I studiously watched for opportunity to repay my 
tormentors in kind. By telling tales to a Dane about what two Norwe- 
gians said of him, and then reversing the order to the others, I soon stirred 
up an intense antagonism between the parties, which resulted in a terrific 
triangular fight in which all were well mauled. But when the battle was 
over, and explanations ensued, my part in the disturbance or agency in 
originating it was made manifest, and all three turned upon me and 
administered such a forcible lecture upon tale bearing and lying, that its 
impression made my bones ache for a week after. 

The result of my first attempt to obtain what I considered would be 
satisfaction for the tricks played upon me, only made me thirst more 



20 



greedily for further revenge and I contrived to get even, in my opinion, 
with one of the Norway men by working upon his superstitious fears. He 
was a firm believer in ghosts and stood in deadly horror of them. Obtain- 
ing a sheet from the captain's bed, I secreted myself behind some of the 
deck lumber during his night watch, and in the gloom and silence of the 
quiet, dim hours, I arose before him, enveloped in spectral white, and as 




NORWAY'S GHOST. 

with'a long stick I extended the sheet far above my head, I gave vent to 
the most dismal, unearthly groans I could utter. The fright of the man 
was terrible, his demoralization complete, and he aroused the ship's crew 
with the violence of his shrieks. While the others were quieting him and 
listening to his explanations, I slipped away, returned the sheet, crept into 
my bunk and was to all appearances in deep slumber on the return of the 
crew, who cursed me for a sleepy-head who could not be wakened by 
Gabriel's trumpet unless he hit me over the " knob " with it. 

My inclination and ability to sleep on all proper and improper occa- 



21 



sions, and my indulgence in extra naps was a source of constant annoyance 
to my shipmates and myself; as I had to cook early and late in each day, 
lend a hand at the ropes and sails whenever required, and stand my regular 
watch at night, I could not catch up with my broken rest, so I would 
" drop off " at all times and in all places about the ship, to be rudely 
awakened by a can of coffee slops dashed into my face, or a drenching 
bath from buckets of sea water flung over me. The dose was always 
active in producing immediate results, but a lasting cure could never be 
effected. 

Of course I was forced to undergo the regular initiation inflicted upon 
all greenhorns on their first crossing the Equatorial Line. Old Father 
Neptune made his visit to our ship as usual, with due ceremonies and obser- 
vances. The representative of the ocean deity came on deck from over the 
side, armed with a trident, his head crowned and covered with long locks 
of white fiax. Seated in due state upon the throne prepared for him and 

surrounded by his attendants, 
he commanded that I should 
be brought before him to 
render the homage due from 
a novice. I was so brought. 
His majesty, after a short 
catechism regarding myname, 
nationality and sundry imper- 
tinent and personal questions, 
proceeded to have me put 
"through a course of sprouts" 
of the most extended and 
severe nature. I was thrown 
over the side of the vessel 
and baptized by being dragged 
through the sea by a rope, 
then I was hauled, hand over 
hand, all breathless and water- 
logged, up and on board, 
where I was lathered over 
face and head, in eyes, mouth 
and nostrils, with filthy tar, 
after which my face was 
shaved (scraped raw) with a 
section of an old y:on hoop serv- 
ing for a razor, a process which 
only served to force still fur- 
ther into my skin, and there 
fix beyond power of soap and 
water to remove, the vile 
compound with which I had 
been plastered. It took the 
work of days, the hardest of 
scrubbings and the renewal 
of several coatings of my 
baptized by neptune. skin before I was able to 




22 

entirely eradicate the ill-scented evidences of Father Nep's attentions. 

I can hardly believe it now that I was so u jolly green " in those days, 
that I then and for weeks after fully believed in the reality of the old Sea 
King. His appearance on and disappearance from the deck were so man- 
aged that I could see nothing of the means thereof, and all preparations 
for the masquerade had been, carefully hidden from me. 

Our voyage to Brazil lasted eleven weeks, and just before arriving at 
Marvin we were boarded by a pilot who was a black man ; he was the first 
negro I had ever seen, and as great a curiosity and subject of astonishment 
to me as had been the ocean monarch under whose treatment I still smarted. 

Throughout the return trip my blunders or ill luck continued, and even 
increased, and my life was a series of misfortunes, accidents and continual 
misery. On one occasion I was called from the cook's galley to serve in 
my other capacity as sailor, and sent to fix something at the top-gallant 
tree ; the work required more time than I had anticipated, and a pot of 
beans, intended for dinner of the crew that day, which I had not removed 
from the fire, by neglect or want of power to attend to, I found rendered 
utterly uneatable. I discovered this disastrous state of affairs on my return 
to the galley from aloft, and before anyone else had detected it. I at once 
overhauled my inventive faculties for some way in which to shift the blame 
and inevitable punishment from my own to other shoulders. Now we had 
a very lively pig on board who lived in a pen on the deck, though now and 
then he would find his way out of confinement and enjoy a little run before 
re-capture. 

Puzzling my wits how to save my own bacon, I happened to think of 
piggy, and I resolved in an instant to upset the pot, spill the contents, turn 
the pig out of the pen, and into the beans, and then blame the poor porker 
with the whole transaction. 

My brilliant conception I at once carried into execution, the pot was 
overturned, the beans scattered over the deck, the scape-goat turned loose 
and into the mess, and the whole play seemed a complete success. 

But my unlucky star was shining brightly over my head and exposed 
my ill-deeds, for the old captain, through a little spy hole in his cabin, had 
witnessed the entire transaction. He said nothing, however, until I had 
gone to him and reported, with well feigned horror, the terrible deeds of 
the pig, and when I had delivered my sad and well prepared story, I was 
confronted with the truth, emphatically informed that my word was unre- 
liable, plainer terms being used; and given also to understand was I that 
my mind and back could be prepared for the reception of twenty-five 
lashes, well laid on. The skipper remarked that he knew,he had the right 
pig by the ear that time. 

It was in vain I prayed to be forgiven and spared the lashes ; the cap- 
tain said he was willing to forgive me, but he also insisted upon giving me 
the lashes. He was sure I needed them as a moral corrective, and 
they would do me good ; I offered to do without them or bestow them 
upon any one else, but the fatherly instincts of my commander and his 
religious sense of duty would not permit him to recall his orders, and 
the twenty-five lashes were laid on — well laid on — by the unsparing 
hand of the robust mate, and then with sore heart and back, 
I was required to prepare another dinner for all hands excepting myself. 
I was forced to share the mess I had made with the pig and make my in- 



23 



terior the stowage place of a hugh lot of burnt beans and dirt, the feast 
winding up with the promise of a dainty dessert of twenty-five more 
lashes, even more heartily laid on, by the refreshed second officer, than the 
original quarter hundred. 

Accustomed though I was to having my digestion aided by muscular 
tpnics, the first serving up was rather too rich for my stomach, and the 
pain and excitement caused me to be in a terribly nervous condition. After 
the crew had done their dinner, as I was washing out the pot in which it 
had been cooked, and before I had received the last portion of my reward 
of demerit, I was summoned to prepare my back for its delivery. At that 
moment I was holding the unlucky pot over the side emptying out of it the 
rinsings. The call to the foot of the mast so agitated me, that, in a frenzy 
of terror the iron vessel slipped from my hands, and in a second had dis- 
appeared beneath the waves. Utter despair took possession of my entire 

being, and I cast myself 
into the ocean after it, deter- 
mined to end a life that 
seemed a never ceasing round 
of misery. 

The cold contact of the 
water quickly changed my 
desire to escape trouble by 
that means, and on coming to 
the surface I gladly availed 
myself of the bouyant assis- 
tance of an empty chicken 
coop the captain threw over 
as a life preserver, and after 
that eagerly clutched a rope 
and allowed myself to be 
picked up by the jolly boat 
and conveyed on deck, where 
the healthy circulation of my 
blood was restored and in- 
sured by the immediate appli- 
cation of the lashes promised, 
with a few extra to make 
sure of the count ; there was 
nothing mean about my cap- 
tain or his mate in serving 
out such luxuries; and I was 
then told that if I still felt 
any inclination for cold wa- 
ter, as a cure for my bruises 
and sorrows I had official per- 
mission to jump overboard at 
once, but that no more 
chicken coops would be 
wasted on me. 

HYDROPATHIC CURE FOR SORROWS. I didn't jump. 




24 



CHAPTER V. 

MORE TROUBLE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 

My unfortunate experiences on board this ship were by no means 
ended though the return voyage was drawing to a close when the trouble 
narrated hi the foregoing chapter occurred. 

One day I was employed with others in hammering rust off the anchor 
chains, when one of the party said to me: 

" Cook, go to the mate, will you, and ask him for a pair of goggles to 
keep these rust chips out of my eyes." 

I felt miserable and wanted friends and sympathy, and so was inclined 
to be obliging, but as I started on the errand, my Norwegian friend noti- 
fied me that this was another sailor's catch, and that I should certainly 
catch the rope's end if I went to the mate with the request. This new 
attempt to make me get more thrashing made me savage, and as we would 
be in port in about two weeks' time, and as I was heartily tired of the never 
ending blows the second officer dealt out to me, I at once determined to 
take that opportunity to pay him a portion of what I considered I owed 
him. Accordingly I secreted a stout, hard piece of rope in my shirt bosom 
and then went boldly up and requested a pair of goggles. 

"Goggles! goggles! you lubber, I'll goggle you ! " and then I found 
that my shipmates had not misinformed me of the reception awaiting my 
application. The rope's end of the mate at once commenced to play upon 
my body with its usual briskness, but the surprise of the tyrant was far 
greater than that intended for me when he found that I had the twin to 
his weapon, and was using it upon his head and hide in a way that showed 
an earnest intention, even if it lacked the brilliant and artistic execution of 
his more practised hand. 




A QUESTION OF EYE GOGGLES. 



25 

Mr. Mate did not take kindly to his own medicine, and the ropes were 
soon dropped in order to bring fists into play, and a pugilistic encounter, 
not scientific, but very energetic, raged fast and furious until I finally suc- 
ceeded in getting my antagonist down upon the deck, and I was " polish- 
ing him off" in a way that seemed likely to settle all outstanding debts 
between us and pay him something in advance, when I was pulled off by 
the captain and crew. 

Of course this violent argument did not tend to make my position or 
life any more pleasant during the remainder of my time on that vessel, but 
it convinced the bullies that I could and had made up my mind that I 
would take my own part, and gained for me that respect which is accorded 
to every man who shows that he is willing to fight for his rights and defend 
himsef from abuse; my back received far fewer visitations from its intimate, 
but not valued, acquaintance after that turn up. 

At last we arrived in London, England, where the cargo we brought 
from Brazil was to be delivered, and I was a happy man, or boy, when I 
received my discharge papers and pay. 




FIRED OUT. 



26 



I found myself in that great metropolis, my own master and the proud 
possessor of a fortune of ten pounds sterling, a sum which seemed to me 
inexhaustable wealth, an opinion that was unpleasantly dissipated after a 
short acquaintance with and experience of the land sharks who feed on 
poor Jack. 

Considering it my duty to see all that was to be seen, I started out in 
search of information, adventure and entertainment, first, however, paying 
out half of my cash for a dandy sailor rig that was worth just about one- 
eighth of the sum it cost me. 

After roaming and gaping about the city all day, I fell in with, as was 
my usual luck, one of the most tender hearted, disinterested, and benevo- 
lent of individuals, who earned his honest living by combining the advoca- 
tions of landlord and shipping master, and with this good Samaritan I en- 
gaged board and lodgings for two shillings a day. The interest this amia- 
ble philanthropist took in my welfare was intense, overpowering ; he was 
unwilling to leave me out of his sight, that I should ship in a vessel where 
my wonderful ability would be properly appreciated and rewarded he in- 
sisted was to be his particular care, consequently he objected to every cap- 
tain I spoke of going with, and continued his more than fatherly super- 
vision and advice until I had not a penny of my wages left, and was in- 
debted to him for a week's board. 

Then he " fired me out " into the street. 

The change in sentiment and action of my late friend left me in a most 
unenviable predicament ; penniless, homeless, a stranger in a strange land, 




&*MM*f 



A PEALING FOR GitUU. 



without employment or food, and unable to ask so as to be understood for 
either. It was in vain 1 wandered, day after day, about the docks and 
made application on ship after ship; no captain wanted me, no Englishman 
would hire me. 

Now and then I would, by signs, strike up a casual acquaintance with 
a good-natured, lazy, or boozy cook on some of the ships I boarded, and 
then I would be given a chance to fill up with a square meal in return for 
peeling potatoes or doing scullion's work about the galley. Most days, I 
starved. 

My lodgings were large and any, requiring no door key, being the 
streets or arches under the railway piers or brewery vaults. My dandy rig 
was rapidly becoming as well ventilated as my places of repose. With 
empty stomach and pockets I tramped day and night through that immense 
city, searching for some way in which to earn a crust, and finding it not. 

Though to save my life I would not deliberately plan and execute a 
robbery, yet on one occasion, in the recklessness of mad despair I partici- 
pated in a transaction that cannot be called honest or even be excused 
under the plea of dire necessity. 

With several other sailors, all equally " hard up " or " low down " as 
myself, I was wandering disconsolately through the London streets, all 
more than half starved; I know that, for three days I had not eaten but a 
few crusts of dry bread. The attention of three famished, destitute men 
was arrested by the delicious smell of cooking food arising from a basement 
refreshment establishment, which advertised its viands by displaying upon 
shelves on the outer side of the door, several rows of pies. 

How our empty stomachs did yearn towards those pies, as they stood 
in tempting array, seeming to call " come and eat me," to the passer-by. 
Hunger silenced all moral sense ; some of those pies we resolved to become 
possessors of, and a conspiracy was at once formed to secure the coveted 
food. 



jjjafijjjiiMLL J| 
' coffee ar PIES 




NO pa(i)nes spared in doing a pi(e)otjs deed. 



28 



An arrangement was soon made; as usual all risk and injury was 
parcled out as my share of the details, and in foolish good nature promptly 
accepted by me as a perfectly natural result of any division of labor. The 
plan of operations, that I was to be shoved violently down the steps and 
against the door, as though assaulted by unknown men, while my com- 
panions grabbed and made off with as many pies as possible, was immedi- 
ately carried into effect. 

The assaulting party so realistically executed their share of the drama 
that, instead of being thrown against the bottom of the door, I was shot 
directly through the glass that formed the upper half, causing confusion 
enough throughout the shop for them to complete their part of the pro- 
gramme and covering me with cuts and contusions in a manner that I 
considered totally unnecessary and over sufficient for the proper enactment 
of my role. 

I lay half stunned and bleeding on the floor of the shop until an officer 
arrived, when I was jerked to my feet and carried off to a police station, 
but there being no evidence whereon to found and sustain a charge against 
me, I had my wounds dressed and bandaged and was then discharged. 

Hastening to the rendezvous appointed before the action, I received at 
the hands of my companions in iniquity a hearty welcome, thanks, con- 
gratulations, praise and two big pies. This is a sad confession, but the 
pies were so good and I was so hungry. 




I RECEIVE MY REWARD. 



29 
CHAPTER VI. 

ANOTHER TURN OF, AND AT, THE WHEEL. 

For another month or more I continued to lead the life, or existence, 
of a vagabond tramp in London, but at last I succeeded in shipping, as or- 
dinary seaman, on board of a Hamburg brig, bound for Pernambuco, 
Brazil. 

My peculiar and most undesirable luck by no means deserted me in 
this venture ; the rest of the crew were all Germans and the strong antipa- 
thy then existing between these people and those of my nation, made my 
term of service in that craft resemble anything but a love feast, and kicks, 
blows, and polygot profanity was the order and exercise of the day until 
we arrived in port. 

I had been doing my duty as cabin-boy, the only friend I had made on 
board was the mulatto cook, and we two, a hopeless and powerless minority, 
made up our minds to escape the continual unpleasantness by discharging 
ourselves, or taking " French leave " from the vessel. 

Watching opportunity, we managed to bring round to the bow of the 
ship, and there secure one evening a small boat, and that night, during the 
cook's bow-watch, we dropped over the side, cast off our boat and pulled 




PAYING TOLL. 



for the shore, reaching the landing only to fall into the hands of a party 
of Brazilian soldiers ; not incorruptible patriots, however, were these 
dusky warriors, and though the story of our woes, told in what of 
their language we could command, failed to melt their hearts and secure 



30 



our liberty, yet a handful of copper coins, placed in their " itching palms," 
resulted in permission to go on our way rejoicing. 

Just where we were to go, or how we were to get there, we had neither 
considered or discussed, but into the interior of the country, for safety 
from recapture, we knew we must strike ; so, first finding the railway 
station, we started by following the track, and then plodded on for many 
weary miles, passing over many water courses. The yellow cook could 
speak English and a little Portuguese, but our fear of arrest made us very 
cautious and, deciding that the track of public travel was dangerous to our 
liberty we again sought the sea shore and followed this irregular path un- 
til we arrived at a little settlement, about twenty miles from our starting 
point. 

Our reception here was by no means flattering, and we were not over- 
whelmed with welcomes. The 
inhabitants of the place were all 
fishermen, and their costume, or 
rather the want of it, was ad- 
mirably adapted to a" header " 
into deep water, at a moment's 
notice. There was one individ- 
ual in the lot of natives, who 
had a leather shoe string from 
which dangled two sea-shells, 
tied about his neck, but public 
estimation evidently set him 
down as a dandified overdressed 
exquisite, for he had no imitators 
among his fellow citizens. 

These people were equipped 
an overdressed native. with some old muskets and all car- 

ried wicked looking spears or lances of home manufacture. They seemed to at 
once comprehend our situation, and without wasting time in explanations, 
they at once surrounded and marched us to a corral, guarded by six men 
and their families. Here we were put under surveilliance as prisoners. 
Large fire were then built and kept up all night, and as I had rather sensa- 
tional ideas about all savages and their habits, I concluded that I had 
indeed escaped "from the frying pan " to meet a more dismal fate. 

But morning came and found us both unbarbecued, and shortly after 
daylight we were placed in the midst of a band of our captors and made to 
tramp disconsolately back to the place from which we had started. Here 
the cook claimed and found protection from the French Consul. I was 
kept away from him, and being unable to speak a word they could under- 
stand, or comprehend anything that was said to me, I was in a bad way, 
but I managed to let them know of my nationality by pointing to a Danish 
flag pictured on a chart, and I was then taken before the representative of 
that power, to whom I related my story. 

Little good did it do me to meet this gentleman from Denmark ; lie 
railed at me in no measured language. 

"You have no right to claim protection," said he; "you leave your 
country and your flag without permission, to enter and serve on a foreign 




31 

vessel, and from this also you desert. I can and will do nothing for you 
except to send you back to the ship you run away from. " 




COLD COMFORT — HOT TALK. 

"I will not go ! " said I. 

" Yes, you will go I " he answered. 

"I'll die before I'll go back to that ship," I replied, all the stubborn- 
ness in my nature now fully aroused. 

"Suit yourself about that," said the official, "but dead or alive, I'll 
send you back to that vessel." 

And then I was put between guards and walked off to the citadel or 
military prison, and for the first time in my life found myself behind the 
bars. But the quarters were far more to my liking than being confined in 
the hold of the ship from which I had escaped, and such would have been 
my fate had I consented to return. In the citadel I had nothing to do, and 
was furnished two excellent meals each day, so I was comparatively con- 
tented. 

But I was not destined to long enjoy my pic-nic, only too soon I was 
again taken before the Consul, heard his commands repeated, returned 
thereto my former reply and was again dismissed with the information that 
I would "have to go back." 

And back to the ship I did go ; four strong sailors seized and tied me, 
tumbled me into a boat and took me to the side of the vessel. I was un- 
bound and tola to mount the ladder and go on board. I refused to move 
hand or foot in such direction, and finding that coaxings and curses were 
equally unavailing, a rope was put about my body and I was hoisted like a 



32 



kicking mule and thrown on the deck I had vowed never again to touch. 
Little mercy and prompt punishment was the rule upon which worked 




I RETURN TO MY SHIP. 

the power to which I had been surrendered, and it seemed that I, who had 
declared that I would die before I would go back, was to be given ample 
opportunity to do that same after my enforced arrival. 

With violent blows and curses I was driven into the sail room and 
there left iu solitude, to end my life, it appeared, by starvation and thirst. 
For seven days I was kept in this solitary confinement without a morsel of 
food or a drop of water. Had it not been that I discovered a barrel of 
vinegar stored away in the room, I should certainly never have survived ; 
by soaking up with a piece of canvas the fluid that escaped from a leak in 
the cask, and then sucking the moist rag, I obtained sufficient nourish- 



33 



rnent to keep me alive, and such was all I had to sustain me during an 
entire week. 




v^T- 



LIGHT DIET. DARK QUARTERS. 



Though I became fearfully ematiated, and had hardly strength to 
speak or move, yet my spirit of resistance continued powerful as when in 
health and at liberty, and I still returned defiant refusals whenever the cap- 
tain proposed that I return to duty and acknowledge his authority. At 
last, enraged though he was at my obstinacy, he became alarmed at my 
rapidly sinking condition, and, not from any humane considerations, but 
solely through fear of consequences to himself, he summoned a doctor who 
rated him soundly for his brutality and ordered my immediate removal 
from the sail room to more comfortable quarters and proper attention. 

So far gone was I with starvation, that at first it was necessary to use 
great caution in feeding me, and three spoonsful of chicken broth, given 
every fifteen minutes, was the allowance upon which I was rationed for a 
time. But a naturally robust constitution and light heart, soon braced me 
up to stand more substantial diet ; appetite and strength returned, and in 
ten days I was almost as well and strong as ever, and with renewed health 
came fresh controversy, the captain continually urging or bullying me to 
go to work consentingly, and I as constantly refusing. 

At last, knowing a si did, that I was amenable to law for refusing to do 
duty, and seeing no way to obtain release or escape from the ship, I made 
a bargain with the captain, that if he would promise that all past quarrels 
should be considered as settled, and no prosecution ever brought against 
me for desertion, I would agree to do my part as one of the crew ; and the 
contract was agreed upon; with the mental reservation on my side, that I 
would quit the ship again the moment I had a chance without danger of 
certain recapture. 

Holding steadily to my determination, I once more took my place and 
worked hard in helping to load an invoice of sugar, with which we sailed 
to Parnahiba to take in the balance of our^ cargo. But the irrepressible 
conflict between the captain and myself soon again broke out with fresh 



34 

violence. He first asked and then ordered me to cook ; as I had shipped as 
an ordinary seaman, and had no inclination to accommodate him in any 
way, I positively refused to comply with his request or to obey his 
command. 

"I'll make you do it! 1 " said he, with oaths and threats. 

" You can't! " said I, with dogged obstinacy. 

And as the skipper had always found that forcing me to do anything 
cost much more than the service was worth, he swallowed the affront and 
his dignity, took the back track and a boat, went on shore, brought off a 
cook and left me enjoy my victory and proper place as a sailor. 

With others of the crew I had to go each day in a boat about a mile 
up the shore from where the ship lay to obtain a supply of fresh water. 
These trips seemed to me to offer a favorable opportunity for escape and I 
prepared to attempt it. Each trip we made I would take something with 
me, and in a few days I had secreted in the brush near the place where we" 
obtained water, an extra shirt, an oil skin coat and as many ship's biscuits 
as I could lay hands on and carry off without exciting suspicion. 

Though I was constantly looking out for a chance to slip off, there 
was none offered until the day that our ship was to weigh anchor and sail. 
I knew that the captain was suspicious of my intentions, and had ordered 
all the crew to keep close watch over me, but, just before sailing, two Eng- 
lishmen, deserters from their own vessels, had been added to our force, 
and as my leaving would not make the ship short-handed and relieve him 
of a constant antagonist, I thought the captain was less anxious to keep 
me, and would thank any action or accident that would take me off. 

At all events, on the day of departure, just as we were ready to make 
sail, I told the captain that I had left my oil skin coat near the watering 
place and asked permission to be set ashore and go after it. 

" Go quickly and hurry back," was his answer. 

This was the last order he ever gave me. I went quickly and I 
hurried, but in the opposite direction from the ship and its detested master 
was my line of march, and it would have taken a swift man to catch and a 
strong one to force me to return from the slavery from which I was 
escaping. 

My hidden treasures I found all safe, and gathering them together, 
with a light heart and free heels, I struck out into unknown regions. 

For days I steadily tramped on my solitary journey ; sometimes I 
would meet a native and try to communicate with him, but as I could only 
point to the southwest and say " Pernambuco, " and the native could only 
point in the same direction and re-echo the word, the interchange was 
neither entertaining or instructive, though the manner of their pantomime 
and utterance of the word seemed to me to indicate that my destination 
was a long way off. 

Many, weary and dreary were the miles I plodded over, with only the 
sun and stars to guide me on my way, through heavy mud and stifling 
dust, beat upon by heavy rain or roasted by a burning sun, and half 
crazed through hunger and thirst. One day I reached, I do not know 
when or how, the borders of a vast forest, and blindly I plunged into its 
depths, following the almost indistinguishable bridle path or narrow horse 
road that alone formed anything of a highway ; my only companions were 
the reptiles of all descriptions that continually appeared before me; 



35 



parrots, monkeys and birds of every plumage were there in countless mul- 
titudes. Once my way was obstructed by an. immense snake ; it was, I 




A SIDE SHOW FREE. 

think, fully thirty feet long, and to my eyes, then, it seemed ten times that 
extent. I am not positive of its size, as I did not stop to interview or 
measure it. I was in a hurry to get on. I got. 

I had little or no idea how or when I would " fetch up." I knew that 
if I kept on the little trails leading in a southwesterly direction, and did 
not die on the way, I would eventually reach Pernambuco; so I marched 
on, not very steadily or strongly now, forcing my way through jungles of 
rank vegetation, fording slimy, sluggish bayous,- and broad, swift, breast- 
high rivers ; my feet swollen to twice their natural size, and cut and blis- 
tered in a hundred places, had made it impossible to wear and useless for 
me to carry my shoes, and I had thrown them away long since ; my stock 
of food was reduced to three biscuits, not sufficient to sustain life for half 
the time I had yet to travel to reach port, so far as I could calculate. That 
was the fix I had put myself into, but still I was satisfied with my action 
in leaving that ship, and felt, even under such very adverse circumstances, 
that I was glad I had done it, and if ever I was similarly situated, " I'd 
do it again! " 

On, and on, and on I hobbled, and just when my last crumbs of food 
were exhausted and hope almost gone, I staggered into a little native set- 



36 

tlement. Such was my miserable condition that it excited the pity of an 
old Indian, who, with his squaw, proved good to be good Christians in deed 
if not in creed ; they found me a wanderer in a strange land, sick, poor, 
and sore wounded. They took me in, anointed my torn and bruised feet 
with oil, fed me with farina and crabs, gave me care, rest and shelter, and 
so patched up and strengthened me that in three days I persisted in re- 
suming my journey. 

The right road and direct course to Pernambuco having been pointed 
out to me by my good Indians, I followed the example of the soul of old 
John Brown, and kept "marching along," refreshed in body and spirits by 
my late rest. After a few days' travel I came, in a lucky hour, upon a 
caravan of merchants, with slaves, parrots, monkeys, saffron and other 
products of the land, making for the same harbor as myself. 

By sign language or pantomine, I gave these people to understand that 
I was a shipwrecked sailor who had been cast ashore many miles up the 
coast, and they appeared to be perfectly satisfied with my explanation. I 
noticed that when they prayed, as they did frequently, they repeatedly 
made the sign of the cross, so I was careful to often appear as though en- 
gaged in my devotions and to imitate their symbolic movements, and this 
soon attracted, as meant it should, their attention and they jumped at the 
conclusion that I was a faithful son of Mother Church, to whom it was 
their duty to render all aid and comfort; fortunate it was that they could 
not catechize me. 

I was equally ready to be co/isidered as Catholic, heretic, Turk or 
Pagan, and to adopt all outward ' signs of any religion if by so doing I 
could only get to my destination more quickly and easily. These kind 
people gave me food, put me on a horse, and cared for my still tender feet, 
•until we arrived at the outskirts of Pernambuco, and there we parted, 
they bestowing upon me their blessings and a Brazilian dollar, wherewith 
I started the world afresh. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

TJS BRAZIL. ALL SORTS OF LUCK. 

The events recorded in the last chapter occurred in the Summer of 
1858, and it was then I first entered the town of Pernambuco as my own 
master. 

A few hours after my arrival, as I was sauntering in rather a listless 
way about the place, who should I run afoul of but that same Danish 
Consul who had refused to aid me, and through whose orders I had been 
returned to the hateful ship. He seemed even more astonished than myself 
at the meeting. 

" What, you here ! " he exclaimed, in tones not expressive of delight. 

"Yes, I'm all here," I replied, coolly. 

" I'll have you arrested again," said he, with anger. 

" I don't care if you do," answered I, " you can't, put me on that ship 
anyhow, she's far enough away from here now." 

He turned and walked off, muttering to himself, and I never was 
troubled by him again. 

There was no vessel in that port on whicli I could ship, and so I looked 
about for other work. The English inhabitants of the town were building 



37 

a gas works, and there I easily obtained employment as a laborer at three 
millreis ($1.50) per day. I toiled faithfully for about two months, drawing 
of my wages only sufficient for the most frugal living, and leaving the 
balance for accumulation in the hands of the foreman ; but when, after 
that length of time, I asked him for my savings, he flatly denied that he 
held a penny of my money or owed me anything, and settled the matter by 
discharging me on the spot as an impudent, dishonest swindler. 

I could get no redress by law. My luck, as usual. 

My blunders brought me into other troubles while at the Port, though 
the results were not so serious as the loss of my money. 

I had reason to be very grateful to persons of the Catholic faith, who 
had proven themselves truly Catholic in their humanity and generosity to 
me ; and under no circumstances would I ever knowingly insult or outrage 
the religious sentiments of any person, be their creed what it might; so it 
was through ignorance, want of quick perception and general greenness 
that I got into two scrapes in Pernambuco. 

A day or two after reaching the place, I was standing idly on the road 
side, when there passed along one of those church processions so common 




IGNORANT IRREVERENCE. 



38 

in that land; priests and boys, banners and drums, etc., etc. In this case 
there was one priest who carried a crown of thorns covered with flowers, 
it being the symbol of that particular festival, and the people all reverently 
uncovered their heads, kissed the crown when presented to them, and 
gave in their contributions of small coin. 

When this sacred emblem was presented to me, I did not exactly un- 
derstand what exact course the etiquette of the occasion demanded, but 
anxious to follow, so far as possible, the motions I noticed, I removed my 
hat, inclined my head, and took a good smell of the flowers, and, as I 
raised my head and carelessly tossed over a small coin, which I could illy 
spare, I suppose I must, by ;t sniff " of nose, general manner, or some ex- 
pression of face, have expressed my unspoken opinion that the smell was 
not worth the price, for, without in the least intending it, I had, by igno- 
rant irreverence, excited the anger of processionists and spectators alike. 

Whew ! what a storm I had raised, my little coin was flung violently 
back into my face, my countenance was drenched with expectorations of 
the bystanders, and with a hearty good will did the holy father curse me 
and all my ancestors back to Adam, for heretics and devils, while the en- 
tire flock re-echoed, endorsed and amplified the anathematism. 

That was my first lesson in church discipline, but not my last, for soon 
after I met another procession, in which a priest w T as bourne in a chair ; 
banners were flying, surpliced boys chanting, rockets firing, censors of 
burning incense swinging, horns sounding, and drums beating ; all hands 
in their finest holiday array. Evidently it was some very grand occasion, 
and I, anxious to take in all the free show possible, was gaping, open eyes 
and mouth, at everything so intently, that I did not notice that every man 
about me stood with uncovered and bowed head, while I, hat on and erect, 
was the conspicuous exception. But my prominence was not of honorable 
distinction, or long continued. I did not take my hat oif , it was knocked 
off ; I did not prostrate myself, I was knocked down, and then I was 
kicked up ; everybody that could reach any portion of my anatomy with 
their feet, applied their boots thereto with most religious zeal which, with 




CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 

the curses again showered upon my head, quickly convinced me that I had 
once more offended against the laws of society and church. 

It was a grand puzzle for my heavy brain; the first time I had been re- 



39 



viled and tlnmipecl for following, so far as I could, the example set me ; 
and here I was knocked about, kicked and cursed because I did nothing at 
all. From that time I ceased to have the least interest in such processions 
and if I observed or fancied I saw any signs of one within a mile of me, I 
made a quick march in the opposite direction. 

Robbed of my money, and employment being hard to obtain, I was 
forced to pass some days in idleness, and one 
morning, as 1 was sauntering about, I noticed 
that I had become a subject of close inspection 
to a man who followed me for some time. My 
curiosity was excited, and I soon gave him an op- 
portunity to address me. 

" Young mon," said he, and his tongue did 
not belie the unmistakable story of his features ; 
i 'Young mon, maybe it moigt be thot its wourk 
yer lookin' fur." 

"Yes," I replied, so well as I was able, " I 
want work." , 

"Will, I'm runnm' ov a plantashun, 'bout 
foour moile back in the onterior, an' I'm wantin' 
a stout chunk ov a lad to tind till mathers ge- 
nerally, an' kape the nagurs till ther wourk. Ye 
jggj^^^m seems till be a likely chap, an' I wouldn't moind 
thryin' ye, ef ye feels till catch hould." 

" Any port in a storm," thought I, so I soon 
,, managed to come to a understanding with the 
' Hibernian gentleman, spite of the struggles 
between the'two lingos, and in a few hours' time I found myself on his 
place hi the "onterior," duly installed as "chief cook and bottle-washer, 
captain of the niggers," to quote the Avoids of the old song. 

There were seven slaves placed under my charge, and besides over- 
seeing these, I had various other duties to perform. The most important 
of my work was in preparing a kind of sugar cake which my master soM 
in very considerable quantities. For a time all went well, I worked hard 
and gave full satisfaction to my employer until bad luck again grappled 
me and I caught, or was caught by, the yellow fever, 

For two weeks I lay sick, nigh unto death, in stupor and delirium. All 
the care and medical attendance I received was from the proprietor, who, 
three times a day would force a pill clown my throat ; it was a pellet of 
Yankee manufacture; I regret that I cannot recall the name and give it a 
gratis advertisement; but through its agency or the intervention of that 
Providence which guards babies, fools and drunken men, I contrived to 
get the better of Yellow Jack, and regained strength to potter about and 
look after the slaves, but unable to do any other work. 

There was one of the gang, a big, lazy fellow by the name of Emanuel, 
whom I used to stimulate to quick finishing of his regular and prescribed 
stint of day's work by permitting him .to go afterwards at easy jobs. One 
day he had completed his task in the field about half an horn- before night 
and I had allowed him to leave the gang. Before all stopped, along came 
the boss. 

" Whar's thon lazy nagur, 'Manu'l ? " he inquired. 




FROM THE "ONTERIOR 



40 



" His day's work is done, and I let him quit," I answered. 

"An' phat are the loiks of ye, thaot's till jidge whin his wourk's done 




CAPTAIN OF THE NIGGERS.' 

an' whin till quit. Sure an' I'll hev no shurkin wid ye ner th' nagurs, 
th' wourk ov none ov yez so iver done whoile ther's th' loigt o'day till do't 
in. Ye '11 be plain' none ov yer bourd-ship sailoor thricks ontil me, ye 
Dutch loafer ye ! " 

The Irishman had been drinking and felt "ugly ; " he had come out 
to find fault and worked himself into a passion in a moment. This injus- 
tice and abuse aroused my anger, and I returned a rather warm answer to 
his tirade ; one hot word led to another, and at last he made an attempt to 
strike me. I had learned to return such arguments in the same style, and 
a healthy scrimmage was organized in a moment, in which, though much 
reduced in strength, I would certainly have come off first best, had not the 
servile blacks answered the call of their master and joined forces with him 
against me, who had ever been their best friend, and with such reinforce- 
ments he managed to give me a sound thrashing. 

It was the old story — injustice, a fight, a beating and loss of employ- 
ment ; but he paid me my wages, what little there was due me, and the 
next morning sun beamed down upon me wandering once more about the 
highways and byways of Pernambuco, a point to which I seemed naturally 
to gravitate. 

Willing and anxious to work, I jumped eagerly at the first offer and 
engaged as " greaser and wiper " of machinery on an old trading vessel, the 
Passanunga, in which vermin infested tub I visited all the way ports 
along that coast as far as the Amazon river, meeting with no adventures 
worthy of record, "greasing and wiping " for my bread, without butter, 



41 



until January, 1859, when my services being no longer required, I was 
once more adrift and idle in Pernambuco. 

Just as my little store of money was running out, and I bad begun to 

despair of finding work, there 
arrived in port the Delaware 
river steamer Mary Comet, 
temporarily in the service of the 
United States, and attached to 
the Paraguyan Expedition. The 
vessel was, fortunately for me, 
short-handed, and on application 
I was shipped among her crew as 
an ordinary seaman ; my first 
enlistment mider the Stars and 
Stripes. 

We sailed to Eio Janeiro to 
coal, and then to St. Catharines, 
from thence to Monte Yideo, and 
at that place I was detailed as 
interpreter for the officers when 
they went on shore, I having 
contrived to pick up enough of 
the language during my residence 
in the country, to make myself 
understood. 

My propensity for bringing 

trouble upon myself soon made 

it warm for me in the Mart 

Comet. I had been regularly 

placed among the crew of the 

shore boat, and considered that I 

under the stars and stripes, was exempt from certain work 

on the ship, so one. day when the bo'swain's mate ordered me to sweep the 

deck, I bluntly answered, "I won't do it." 

This terrible offence and incipient mutiny was at once reported to the 
commander, Lieutenant Walsh, and I was duly hauled up before that high 
authority. 

" Did you refuse to sweep the deck when so ordered ? " he asked. 
"Yes, I did ; it was no work of mine," I replied. 
That is the full report of the proceedings of my trial ; the sentencing 
of the prisoner occupied about sixty seconds more. 

"My man, you have violently outraged the rules and regulations, 
discipline and good order of the United States Navy by refusing to obey the 
orders of your superior officer. Double irons, bread and water and con- 
finement in the hold will probably make you willing to do your duty. 
Mast'r Arms, take him down." 

Double ironed I was, confined in the stifling hold also, and on bread 
and water, not an over-allowance either, was I rationed. The confinement 
and starvation troubled me little, a lashing I would have considered as 
quite a matter of course but the disgrace of being handcuffed like a felon, 





42 

nearly broke my heart, and the misery welled up from my breast and found 
outlet through the ports of my eyes ; I blubbered like a baby and begged 
hard for forgiveness and release. But the sentence was carried out in full 
and all the consolation offered me was the jeering of 
my shipmates and sarcastic inquiries as to how I liked 
Uncle Sam's jewelry. 

My bracelets were, in due time, unlocked, and I 
returned to duty a much wiser sailor. I never hank- 
ered after another attachment of like character, but 
the country of the Star Spangled Banner contrived to 
fasten my freedom-loving nature to it, and it has ever 
since remained the land of my devotion, adoption and 
citizenship, and'will be thus held by me while I live: 
Here many of us spent our shore leave and money 
in hiring riding horses and trying to stick on them, 
much to the amusement of the lookers on, our own 
danger of serious damage, and the misery of the 
u. s. jewelry animals. 
Horses are not high at Monte Yideo. The hire was $1 per half day. 
We were told that if we killed the horses it would be all square provided 
we brought back the saddles. The riders were hardly long enough on the 
" upper deck " at any one time to do much damage to the brutes. 

After remaining about two weeks at Monte Yideo with others, I was 
transferred to a small tender named the William H. Ch apiist, and in it 
•we sailed for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, arriving there about the first of 
May, 1859, and from deck I stepped for the first time upon the soil of the 
Great Republic of the earth. Almost immediately our vessel was ordered 
to Washington, where the crew was paid off and discharged, I receiving as 
balance due me the sum of twenty-eight, dollars. 

CHAPTER YI1X 

CRUISING ON SHORE. 

As became me, being now a free man in a free country, I put on my 
considering cap and reckoned up the best way in which I should proceed to 
make my fortune. 

The path of the sea, which I had been following, did not seem to lead 
to wealth of great magnitude or very exalted station and I concl uded that 
I would try the overland route to riches and honor. I purchased a suit of 
" shore togs " and made my way by rail from Washington to Philadelphia, 
and started out throngh that city in search of employment. 

The two years of service or apprenticeship at the foundry in my na- 
tive land had of course taught me something of the trade and I possessed 
sufficient knowledge to enable me to perform some of the rougher work. 
I obtained a place at North's foundry, Second and Mifflin streets, and was 
set at making covers for the old-fashioned cast-iron Dutch ovens ; but the 
other journeymen soon discovered that I had never served my full time of 
apprenticeship and they combined to throw me out. By tricks, well known 
to the trade, my work was constantly spoiled, and at length they 
notified the foreman, and he informed me, that I could only re- 
main there by entering as an apprentice or doing common laboring 
work. I accepted the latter alternative, but breaking up old iron, 



43 




wheeling heavy pigs of metal, and loading rusty "scrap," was by no 

means to my liking, and after a 
week's trial, I resigned. 

Through application made at an 
intelligence office, I next obtained a 
place as Jack-of -all-work, at a sum- 
mer boarding house, about fifteen 
miles in the interior of ]S"ew Jersey ; 
wages, six dollars per month, and I 
remained there just long enough to 
earn that amount ; then the idea of 
going West "to grow up with the 
country," that had found its way 
into my head, sometime before, took 
i don t like it. such strong hold upon me that I was 

unable to stay in content where I was. 

Back to Philadelphia I went, and at Dock street depot I purchased an 
emigrant's ticket for Cleveland, Ohio, and reached that place safe and sound 
with my plans for the future as indefinite as ever. My ideas as to the geog- 
raphy of this country were decidedly mixed and foggy, and so, when I 
noticed hi the dock at Cleveland, a steamer on which I spelled out the 
word ''Buffalo," I reasoned that she must naturally and necessarily 
come from and go to the place where those animals made their home; that 
their haunts were hi the wild far West I knew, and great was my delight 
when I found that not only could I go on her, wherever she was bound, 
and steam was up ; but I was also told that I could go free of payment pro- 
vided I shovelled coal during the trip. I seized the opportunity and the 
shovel with avidity. 

Judge of my disgust when I found after starting, that the Buffalo 
belonged jn and was bound for the city of that name, in the State of Xew 
York, and when I arrived there I was about as far from the bison and the 
prairies as when in Xew Jersey. 

But still intent upon reaching the land of the setting sun, I continued 

my efforts in that direction, and 
succeeded in shipping as seaman 
on the schooner C. Baker, 
bound for Port Huron, on Lake 
Erie. In this craft I had a 
good time and pleasant asso- 
ciates ; the food was first-class 
and plenty of it; there was a 
woman cook on board, and the 
men were treated like men. 
Had it not been for the demon 
of unrest which urged me on, I 
should have remained on the 
Baker, but I had said to my- 
self, " Go West, young man, go 
West !" I so went. 

Leaving the schooner 3t 
Port Huron with good spirits 




44 




and two dollars in pocket, I struck out "on the tramp," and in that 
manner of progression I reached Sandusky, Ohio, and after trying and 
failing to find work or better means of transportation, with heavy heart 
and feet, with pockets completely lightened of 
cash, I footed it onward towards Toledo. 

By this time I had become in look entirely, 
and in feeling somewhat, a genuine ''tramp," 
a professional, and at that age the vagabond in 
my disposition seemed to reach its full develop- 
ment. I certainly did not dislike my occupa- 
tion, or rather my life without one. When I 
was hungry I would keep a sharp look out for a 
farm that gave evidences of very careful atten- 
tion, as though full handed, at its house I would 
apply for ivork, and as they had no work for me 
to do, they could not and never did refuse me 
food ; in this manner I obtained what rations I 
required without being directly a beggar. 

My education in my last profession soon 
advanced sufficiently to suggest improved means 
of locomotion, and I proceeded to try "jump- 
ing " the freight trains. By crawling into a car 
and secreting myself among a load of lumber, I 
managed to be carried to Chicago, where, with 
intent to pursue the same tactics, I hid in a 
EN tramp for Toledo, train just starting and kept out of sight until 
the car, in which I was, had been detached and left at the station to which 
it was consigned ; then I crept out and found that I had been taken on the 
back track East as far Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Disheartened but not dismayed, I 
j again turned my face to the West and 
started to recover the retraced miles. 
For a time I "jumped the trains;" 
| when I was detected by the conductors 
lor brakesmen, I would be put off and 
j|| have to wait until the next train 
In passed. I generally rode some consider- 
|| able distance before discovery, and so 
| saved many hours of foot travel while 
[enjoying a boost on the car bumper. 
sBut transportation was not every con- 
sideration; there were very few nouses 
jdirectly on the line of the rails and the 
'cars would not "stop for refresh- 
ments " for my benefit. It was a case 
r ^of legs or stomach — one of these had to 
^suffer, and stomach won the day. I 
--^abandoned car riding for the time being, 
'^^^except as an occasional luxury, and 
took up the tramp through country 

A BOOST ON THE BUMPER. roads. 




45 

I did not want work, anyhow, not until I got "away out West," 
whither I was bound ; but I did stand most terribly in need of cash and 
clothing. I had not quite lost all sense of shame or pride and I could not 
reconcile myself to the thought of coming down to what I considered 
straight, square begging, though the means I adopted and the results at- 
tained would hardly be called by any other name by an unprejudiced rea- 
soner. 

I still had in my possession, one poor, solitary little coin, a silver three 
cent piece, and on this remarkably light specie basis I operated, supple- 
menting its power with various " ways that are dark and tricks that vain," 
practised by the tramping fraternity, and contrived to make that one piece 
of money find me in food for weeks without begging. 

The modus operandi was as follows : I limp up to a house, and with 
doleful aspect and all the politeness I could muster, I would salute its 
mistress. 

"Lady," I would say, and if the woman was particularly old, ugly 
and slatternly, I was careful to address her as " young lady." 

" I am a poor man hunting for my friends who live somewhere about 
this neighborhood. I am very tired and very hungry, but I do not want 
to beg. I have just these three cents left in the world, will you please 
give me a few bites of food for it I '" 

That "fetched 'em, every time," the grub would be forthcoming, 
good and plenty. And who could be so heartless as to take the last three 
cents from a poor, foot-sore sailor lad ? 

Once, however, my financial resources were in very serious danger ; 
they were for a short period actually sequestered. That was a terrible 
time to me, terrible ! 

I had stopped with the usual sorrowful tale and humble solicitation at 
the house of an old lady who served me with a moderate ration, and when 
I tendered to her my money, she took it. I was thunderstruck and demor- 
alized ; all my capital squandered for a "hand out," far below the general 
average as to both quantity and quality. The shock made me so sick that 
I almost returned the food I had eaten, on the spot. 

But wild despair quickened my invention, and I determined to make 
a desperate effort to recover my treasure. Turning a really piteous face 
towards the dame, I said, with stimulated sobs and unfeigned sorrow: 

" I am very thankful to you, lady, I must hmp on now. Bless you, 
ma'am, bless you ! May the time never come when you, or any one be- 
longing to you, will ever have to turn from a door, out into the wide 
world, feeling that they have parted with then last cent, for food to keep 
from starving, and not knowing that they will ever have a crust given to 
them elsewhere." 

And then, having worked up my own feelings into the belief that I was 
really a much injured mortal, and in immediate clanger of death from the 
cause mentioned, I " bo-ho-ed " right out, in good earnest. 

The appeal, the tears, were too much for the ancient madam who had 
begun, probably, to feel some shame in yielding to her cupidity ; my three- 
cent piece was returned to me, and, proud tribute to my histrionic and orato- 
rical powers, a dime was added. I was further filled up with a hugh wedge 
of pie and sent on my wicked way rejoicing. 

The above was but one of the many mcidents that tended to make 



46 



my life on the road a series of singular, sometimes pleasing, and often ex- 



citing encounters. 



people 



I came in contact with and each 
individual had to he met and 
managed hi a different way. 
" Blarney," the ".taffy," of talk, 
was, on most occasions, the "best 
holt," and many were the times 
when a blousy servant girl, or 
vinegarish mistress, proposed to 
set the dog on me that a speech, 
complimentary to the charms of 
face or person, would keep the 
dog chained up and gain for me 
a square meal with milk in 
plenty. 

I led tins life for considerable 
time, and though my morals were 
fast becoming as seedy and di- 
lapidated as my clothing and 
boots, yet my conscience, not 
the triumph or genius. entirely dead to good, or my 

sense of manhood which still occasionally rebuked me, at intervals 
prompted the turning of my feet into a new and more honorable path, and 
at last such inward urgings, with the fact that I had seen enough of the 
West to be disenchanted" for the time being, forced me to come to a right 
about and return to Philadelphia. 




CHAPTEB IX. 

FRESH AND SALT. 

Eastward bound once more, I made what haste I could to carry out 
my newly formed intention, and of course the country had to supply my 
wants as I travelled through it. 

One morning as I was passing an orchard, the tempting sight of deli- 
cious apples upon the trees, and my hungry stomach, got the upper hand of 
my honesty, and I was soon among the fine fruit. I had eaten my fill and 
bundled a lot of choice specimens in my handkerchief and was about to 
take my departure wjien I was confronted by the angry proprietor. 

"You confounded thief!" he cried, "I'll make you pay for those 
apples with your hide. I'll break your thieving back for you, you 
scoundrel ! " and he flourished his, stout cane to emphasize every word he 
roared. 

It was all in vain that I pleaded my hunger and destitute condition, 
asked his pardon, offered to pay all the money I had for what was eaten, 
and to empty my bundle at the foot of the tree from which I had taken the 
fruit. 

"No!" he would not be appeased; a thrashing I deserved and a 
thrashing he was going to give me. Now, in the navy I had, of course, 
taken my part in single-stick exercise ; I quietly waited with the strong 
stick which formed part of my tramp equipment, until the old gentleman 
started to do execution with his cudgel, which he proposed to break over 
my head and back. 



/ 4< 



That I was in the wrong I was very conscious, and I resolved that my 
part in the combat should only be to defend my flesh and bones, and 

under no circumstances would I 



hurt the old man. So the first 
blow he struck was caught on 
my stick, and pound as he would, 




FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 



and he did his best, he could 
never break through my guard. 
I calmly parried all his cuts until 
he wore out his breath, his 
strength and his ill-humor all 
together ; then he stopped and 
bade me take myself off and the 
apples with me, for an impudent 
rascal that I was. 

The fruit was very good, and 
a most opportune gift, as, the 
country just there being very 
thinly settled, I was forced to 
subsist upon it alone for two days. 

In a hurry to arrive at Phila- 
delphia, I "jumped " the cars at 
every chance, and finding that 
the "land-wrecked sailor" was 
the most "taking dodge," I 
"worked the racket " of a man- 



of-war's-man trying to get back to his ship, for all it was worth, and I 
found it a very valuable aid, even with those general unbelievers, the K. R. 
conductors. With my well concocted and oft-repeated story, I so worked 
upon the good nature of sundry trammen that I was given many free rides 
and other favors, one man taking me through from Pittsburg to Altoona, 
and giving me a card to another who carried me to within three miles of 
Philadelphia, where I was obliged to drop off in order that he might run 
no risk of getting into trouble. I re-entered the Quaker City on foot, and 
hunting up some kind people I had before made friends with, I was by 
them furnished with food and shelter. 

On application at the Navy Yard, in Philadelphia, I found that no 
sailors were being enlisted there, and I at once started for, on foot, Balti- 
more, Md., to try and ship from that city. From a "land-shark " who, 
in the hope of obtaining some of my advance pay, had helped to fix me up 
in somewhat presentable shape, I had gotten a pair of shoes ; as it was not 
my fault that I could enter service at the first named place, I kept on, and 
walked off with, the shoes; but they proved the instruments of punishment 
for the wrong I committed, for being much too small, their pinching and 
the hard tramping so crippled my feet, that it was in terrible misery I 
marched on, and just below Wilmington, Delaware, I was forced by my 
sufferings to halt. 

Stopping at the first house I came to, I asked leave to rest awhile and 
begged the people to give me a little food. In talking to the good lady I 
told her my true story, and as some of her ancestors had been Danes, she 
was so much pleased to meet a bona fide native of Denmark, that she 



treated me with most generous hospitality, and on my departure gave me 
a quarter of a dollar, the possession of which seemed to lessen very con- 
siderably the misery in my feet. 

When near Perry ville I concluded to take a rest by riding "a quar- 
ter's worth " in the cars, and at that place I waited for and boarded the 
train. The rear cars were occupied by a militia company, on an excursion 
to Baltimore; I crowded in among the merry holiday soldiers, and, as we 
steamed rapidly over the miles, I waited in fear and trembling for the 
conductor to appear ; but that official never came, and I was taken into the 
city of Baltimore free of charge. Good luck for once. 

I immediately made tracks for the shipping depot, and by sacrificing 
my two months' advance pay, twenty-eight dollars, to a land-shark, I was 
able to obtain the necessary outfit with which to pass the required inspec- 
tion, and in a few hours I found myself snugly stowed away, an Uncle 
Sam's Blue Jacket, on board the U. S. Receiving Ship, Allegheny, 
where I was duly instructed in the routine of duty, which, in port, is more 
monotonous than exciting, though my blunders managed at times to vary 
the even tenor of my way. 

It was my fortune for a time to be" spit box " bearer ; that by no 
enviable position which is the reward, or penalty, bestowed for expectora- 
tion upon the deck. The man of mark, or who makes such mark, has the 
box strapped upon his breast, unpleasantly near, and directly under his 




SOME HAVE HONORS THUUST UPON THEM 



nose, and he is forced to walk the deck for the accommodation of the crew, 
and carry this unsavory load until he detects and reports some new 
offender in the same way. But the reporting does not always follow such 
detection, for if the guilty party latest discovered be the best man of the two, 
a tremendous thrashing is sure to follow the transfer of the badge of dis- 
honor and dirt. I was forced to carry that detestable box for three days 
before I caught a fellow sinner whom I could report and whip also. 

There was still another naval honor I had thrust upon me while on the 



49 



Allegheny, it was the position Captain of the Head ; this promotion is 
won by being found washing clothing at times other than those prescribed by 
the ship regulations. The duties of the Captain consist in cleansing a very 
necessary, but not particularly sweet-scented section of the vessel's internal 
economy. The occupant of the post lias, as some slight compensation, the 
special privilege of washing clothing every evening, and as there are always 
plenty of lazy sailors, the Allegheny had her share of them ; and as 
they would pay a shilling for washing a shirt, twenty-five cents for cleaning 
a hammock, and for other articles at proportionate rates, I made several 
dollars during my occupancy, which continued exactly one week, when I 
gladly retired in favor of some other unfortunate, who, by sin of omission 
or commission, was considered to have earned a right to the high (flavored) 
dignity. 

While on this Receiving Ship I endeavored to improve my knowledge 
of and speech in the English language, and purchasing a spelling book I 

set earnestly to work, copying also 
the written characters. I made 
considerable progress in my self- 
imposed and difficult task and my 
perseverance excited the admira- 
tion of my shipmates to such an 
extent that two old tars, Billy 
Sims and Jack Petty, veterans of 
the Mexican War, propose to aid 
me, so far as speech went, by slit- 
ting my tongue with the sharp 
edge of a silver shilling, which 
they assured me was just the 
thing to improve the talking of 
parrots and " f urriners, " and 
an aid to the acquisition or ENG-that " it wouldn't hurt a bit and 
lish. do me a power of good." They 

siezed me and were about to carry out their plan when my howls brought 
the officer of the deck, who put an end to the experiment. 

v For six months I remained upon the vessel, then I was drafted for 
yard and boat duty at the Xaval Academy, Annapolis, Md., from there in 
two weeks, transferred to the Eeceiving Ship Pennsylvania, laying at 
Norfolk, Ya. , where I remained until the end of the year, when, tired of 
the dull, uneventful life, I asked for my discharge, which was readily 
granted, their being at that time too many men in the navy. 

I received my discharge in October, 1860, and my pay amounted to 
exactly $128, being just one hundred dollars more than the sum with which 
I quitted my first IT. S. ship. The Western fever had again taken posses- 
sion of me, and I made ready to once more move in that direction, not 
however, as as tramp this time, but in a mild way, as a "bloated capi- 
talist," a merchant, though my ideas in that line did not rise above the 
dignity of peddling. 




50 



CHAPTER X. 

SUNDRY SHORE AND SORE SITUATIONS. 

Doffing the blue and donning the u biled" shirt', with store-clothes 
corresponding, I travelled, as a gentleman of moderate means, not wealthy 
but independent ; from Baltimore to Wheeling, 
West Virginia, there took steamer to Cincinnati, 
Ohio, from thence going to St. Louis, Mo., where 
I secured boarding at the Green Tree Hotel. I 
was at that moment in possession of good health 
and strength, a serviceable knowledge of the Eng- 
lish language, a pretty solid opinion of myself and 
abilities, a fair stock of clothing, one hundred dol- 
lars in cash, a varied experience, and a revolver, 
which, weapon I bought by advice of a friend and 
was always afraid to handle for fear I should unin- 
tentionally blow the roof oif my own or somebody 
else's head. 

Seeing no immediate opening for judicious in- 
vestment of my capital and being unwilling to re- 
main in idleness which would reduce my store, 
I looked about for employment. 

I had half formed the intention of taking an 

overland train for California, but it was the depth 

of winter and all lines of travel were blocked with 

heavy snows. The St. Louis and Missouri Pacific 

Bail road was at that time in course of construction 

and men were wanted to work upon the line, 

wages being $1.15 per day. This seemed better 

with money in my than living u all out and nothing in," so I con- 

pocket. eluded to take up the pick and shovel as a railroad 

laborer and try to dig my way into a fortune. 

Soon I was enrolled in a gang and forwarded to the place of work, 
which was where the town of Sedalia now stands ; at that time the ground 
was an immense corn field, the whole section, bleak, barren and cheerless 
as the North Pole, cold as a pawnbroker's heart ; a dull, gloomy, howling 
wilderness, the only building for miles about being the big barn of an 
" Irishman's shanty " erected for the R. R. workmen. 

We had good, coarse food, and plenty of it, and far more than plenty 

of bad whiskey, which could be 
bought for twenty-eight cents a 
gallon, and was of that quality 
that contained three drunks, six 
fights, oceans of profanity and 
any desired number of black eyes 
In every quart of it. 

All around the four sides of 
the house were shelves, substitutes 
for beds, roosting places, called by 
a liberal stretch of courtesy and 
truth "sleeping bunks," and these 





ENJOYING THEMSELVES. 



51 




reached from floor to roof . Every night the scenes performed in that sin- 
sodden shanty would have made Donnybrook Fair seem a Quaker meeting 

by contrast ; the crazy-drunken 
crowd would dance, and fight and 
howl, and roar like all the fiends 
in Pandemonium. They called 
this " enjoying themselves." 

Outside it was colder than 
zero, inside it was hotter than 
China, but in no wise so celestial. 
There was comfort for me 
neither inside or outside; because 
I would not join in the whiskey 
guzzling and insane devilment 
in which they delighted, these gen- 
erous blackguards would give 
A WARM friend. me my share f the liquor by 

throwing it into my face and eyes. 

I wanted the work and the pay ; as it only cost two dollars per week 
for board, so I was making and saving money, and though it was a horribly 
rough and unpleasant life, I was disposed to stick to it as long as I could. 
Cold and windy ! I shiver yet when I think of it. It had been my luck to 
be assigned a bunk on the floor range, and the blasts that came sweeping 
in under the doors, and poorly joined weather boarding cut through me 
like a knife, the one thin blanket allowed me being hardly any protection 

whatever, and night after night I 
lay shivering and sick with the cold, 
awake through all the dark hours, until Provi- 
dence came to me in the shape of a pig. 

The person who boarded the laborers had 
a pig, and piggy with the wisdom of his kind, 
knew that it was much warmer inside than 
outside the shanty, so he got in the habit 
of seeking his repose within, and being a very 
sober and gentlemanly pig, he naturally 
sought out a human of somewhat the same 
characteristics. As I was the only temper- 
ance man in the party, and my ground floor 
bunk very handy, piggy chummed in with me, 
and after we found that by laying very close 
together there was a considerable amount of 
heat to be obtained for each from the other, 
we were constant bed-fellows and perfectly 
satisfied with each other, though sometimes he 
wanted more than his fair share of bunk room. 
My success with the pick and shovel was 
not brilliant, that I lacked natural aptitude 
for effectively handling these valuable imple- 
ments was was soon so' apparent that the boss, 
who was not a bad fellow, changed my task 
poor picking. lllic [ tried me as mule driver, and two of those 




52 




long eared, nimble heeled embodiments of allcantankerousness were delivered 
over to my charge, or rather I was delivered over to their cussedness. Of all 
the mulish mules that ever backed, baulked, bucked, shied, kicked and bray- 
ed, these two were the worst ever built 
upon four hoofs since mules were first 
manufactured. Whether I could not 
understand them or^iey could not un- 
derstand me, I do not know; but just 
what I did not want those confounded 
mules to do was the very perfor- 
mance they persisted carrying out ; 
this would excite my mulish propen- 
sities, and as I was bound that they 
.should do as I wished, and they were 
bound they wouldn't, the war was 
incessant between us. But the other 
two mules always won. 
the three of us. How long my patience (or obsti- 

nacy) and perseverance would have enabled me to hold out in the fight be- 
tween us three, or how soon I would have been killed by the mules, or 
"bounced " by the boss, as incompetent, it is 
impossible to judge ; the blackest mule won the 
fight and settled the question most summarily, 
by bringing his hard hind hoof down upon my 
great toe with deliberate malice and sufficient 
force to crush the nail deep into the flesh and 
so cripple me that I was given an honorable 
discharge for wounds received and disability 
incurred in the line of duty, and, with earnings 
in pocket and foot in a sling, I returned to St. 
Louis. 

While laid up, nursing my foot, I became 
acquainted with an old German, who induced 
me, so soon as I was able to again be about, to 
embark some of my capital in the manufacture 
of artificial honey, the substitute for the "bee- 
juice," being composed of genuine honey, wax 
and sugar. The senior partner prepared the 
_rr — stuff, and I peddled it to druggists and grocers 
at a price far below that of the real article. 

We were building up a good trade and 
"making a fair amount of money, when our 
the other FELLOW bright prospects were clouded and obliterated 
won. by the outraged honesty or some other motive 

of the Irish woman in whose house we lodged. This female follower of 
Saint Patrick spied in upon our manipulations, as we used her wash house 
for a laboratory, making, in a clothes boiler, the "genuine Bee-Honey," 
without troubling the busy bees in the least. 

In emphatic language and violent passion this Milesian madam venti- 
lated her opinion that we were a pair of "pizinm/, murtherin', swindlin' 
Dutch vagabones," and wound up her tirade by shouting, hair and fist fly- 




ing, "I'll put the perlice ou ye ! 1 will ! I will !" and flung herself out as 

though intending to at once summon an officer. 

I had a holy horror of all law proceedings and knew not how great 
was the extent of my offending or its penalty ; and I 
had no particular desire for enlightenment on these 
points, so I quickly then and there dissolved the part- 
nership and retired from the firm and its sweet busi- 
ness, with a loss of twenty dollars on my original in- 
vestment. 




" I'LL PUT THE 
PERLICE ON YE ' " 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE LUCK IS MIXED. 

Modest by nature aud not desiring to be brought 
prominently before the public through police influ- 
ences, my retiring disposition made me anxious to leave 
St. Louis at the earliest possible moment, and so I 
__L=1 t°°k passage on a steamboat bound for New Orleans, 
imgi La., but we had only proceeded on our journey down 
the Mississippi as far as Cape Girardeau, when the 
boat stranded, the "cold snap " caught us, and for 
f ourteen days we were ice bound at that point. 
Always anxious to be earning something, when wood choppers were 
wanted to get together a supply for the boat, I applied to be put at the 

work. But I was no more an 
axe man than a pick expert and 
after inflicting several minor cuts 
upon my shins, which caused me 
to limp around in bandages, I put 
an end to my career as wood 
butcher, by sinking deep into my 
foot the sharp blade intended to 
split a great log of wood into 
size for the cabin stove. 

Crippled and quiet I re- 
mained until the boat at last 
reached New Orleans, by which 
time I was again able to walk 
about. My cash on hand footed 
up about sixty dollars and fearing 
_that, unless I at once engaged in 
some business for employment I 
no hand — but A foot — for edoe could not find ; my money would 
tools. run off from me and I would run 

off to sea (which I did not wish to do), I plunged at once into a new and 
fowl business, the chicken trade. 

I would carefully watch for and be first to board the flat boats that 
came down the river bringing market produce and truck for city consump- 
tion, from these I would purchase their entire stock of chickens, in large 
or small lots, then tramping around the streets with as many specimens of 
my stock as I could carry in my hands or hang about my person, I would 




54 




sell them to restaurants, hotels and families, singly or by pairs, so many .as 
they wanted, at a very fair profit. 

I quickly extended my acquaintance and trade and 
by close attention to business was soon thriving, having 
accumulated in less than four weeks over three hun- 
dred dollars in ready cash, and carrying generally a 
stock of about one hundred dozen chickens. Most of 
my feathered, clucking and crowing stock I kept in 
coops on the levee or wharf and I paid a man one dollar 
and a half a night to act as watchman over my 
property. 

A genial disposition, readiness to make friends, the 
somewhat liberal use of money that was now rather 
plentiful in my pockets, any one, or all of these com- 
bined, served to make me really or apparently very 
popular with a certain class of individuals to be found 
everywhere, who are always glad to share any man's 
prosperity. I was soon "in with the boys" who made 
much of, and off me. 

This was in the "good old times," just "befo' 
A fowl trade, the way ' when gambling was openly carried on in 
hundreds of places in New Orleans and other cities of the South, where in 
magnificent apartments, with free suppers, liquors and segars for visitors, 
piles of glittering coin were hourly won or lost, and fortunes changed 
hands nightly. Into one of these establishments, on a second floor of a 
building near the French market I was introduced by several of my new 
found friends, and after the excitement and temptation had taken hold 
upon my imagination, it required little or no persuasion to induce me to 
venture my money. 

The first night that I entered the lists against the tiger, "I won 
squarely or was allowed to win over forty dollars, and I left the gambling 
house perfectly intoxicated, not with liquor, but with my good fortune. 
Here was the right way to make money, to get rich ! I had found the 
road to fortune at last, and I laid awake speculating how long it would 
take me, calculating my winnings at forty dollars a night, to become as 
rich as I wished to be. Well, I was a big fool, as there has been big fools 
over just the same alluring prospect since the earth was peopled, and will 
be big fools until the earth has ceased to exist. 

The chicken business contained no element of excitement equal to my 
new found money making scheme, and, never realizing that I was but a 
poor chicken, to be most unmercifully plucked by the hawks that I had 
allowed to gather round me, I went a second time to the gambling place, 
not to fare quite so well as on my first visit. Then I went a third time, 
sure that I would make up my losses and win much more, and as I left the 
doors of the house that night, they closed on a room and table where I had 
parted with over two hundred dollars of my honestly earned savings which 
had gone to fill the pockets of my disinterested, newly found, very dear 
friends. 

As I said before, the unhealthy and unnatural excitement of those last 
few days had caused me to neglect and despise my chicken business, and 
now that ,1 begun to understand what a poor fool I had been, I thought it 



55 



Was time for me to look after the legitimate trade that brought me honest 
gains and good sleep. I hurried to the levee and reached the spot where I 
expected to find one hundred or more dozens of chickens, and I saw noth- 
ing. The space generally occupied by my stock ,was a bare, empty patch, 
not a coope, not a chicken, not even a feather to be seen and no watchman 
about. After considerable trouble, I found the man whom I had employed 
to guard my property, and discovered that he had ignorantly, or for a 
share of the proceeds, delivered the entire lot on a fraudulent order, signed 
by the name of a firm that had no existence, and there was not left to me 
a single chick or payment of a cent. 

Utterly unmanned and driven frantic by this latest loss, crowded as it 
was upon my squandered capital left with the gamblers, I gave a howl of 
despair, cried, tore at my hair, and at last rushed to the edge of the levee 
and giving what I thought was my last yell of anguish on earth, I plunged 
into the Mississippi. All this occurred on my birth 
day, and the anniversary of my entrance into the 
world would have marked my exit therefrom, had I 
not been such a born blunderer that I could not even 
commit suicide properly. 

Had I dived in my head would certainly stuck 
fast in the deep mud which underlaid the few inches 
of water about the part of the levee from which I 
made my plunge, and I would have found a dirty 
death through suffocation in the filth, but as I had 
jumped, it was my legs that sunk into the slimy, 
J sticky, putrif ying mass of refuse in which I sunk 
waist deep. 

For the second time in my life the desire to end 
i^MJ^ 1 my existence was destroyed by the agency through 



~^^i±^ which I attempted to accomplish the deed, and as I 



felt myself slowly sinking in the mass of corruption, 

all gone. I howled most lustily for aid, and was fished out or 

dragged from the mire, to employ an hour or so in cleansing my person and 

garments and collecting for future service what of brains and common 

sense I was possessed. 

My latest and most unpleasant experiences of life in New Orleans had 
rendered its atmosphere, and all connected with the city, most unpleasant. 
Had I won, -instead of lost money by gambling, I dare say all would have 
been rose-colored, but I didn't win, and was therefore piously penitent as 
poor, so I gathered up my ideas and property, took in all money due me, 
and started for other pastures. 




56 



CHAPTER XII. 

STILL ON THE DOWN GRADE. 

When I scraped the mud of its dock from off my garments and shook 
the dust of the Cresent City from off my No. 12 brogans, I had no very 
definite idea of where I was going, but I took a steamer, and in three 
days during, which I gradually recovering a healthy state of mind, I found 
myself in Galveston, Texas, and there I fell in with an old friend and fel- 
low countryman. 

It was j ust at this time that the secession excitement had reached its 
red-hot temperature, "Lone Star " and " Palmetto" flags were fluttering 
from hundreds of halyards and poles, and the " Stars and Stripes" were 
conspicuous by their absence. On every side was heard the busy notes of 
preparation for grim war. The people of the South, men, women and chil- 
dren, were crazy "to fight for their rights ; " the steamer Harriet Lane 
had been taken possession of by the State authorities. It was very evident 
that war and bloodshed was inevitable. 

Men were then in all portions of the country, obliged to define their 
positions in very piain language, taking sides one way or the other, and 
asserting themselves boldly. There was no study over the question with 
me. Since I had left the flag of my native land, I had served under that of 
several other nations, but the "Flag of the Union" was the first that 
attracted the loyalty of my heart, before I ever heard of or knew the word 
secession, I had sworn allegiance to the starry banner, not only in words, 
but by true adoption for the balance of my life and to the old flag I was 
going to stick through thick and thin, on the relative merits of the ques- 
tions in dispute between the two sections I did not try, or was I competent 
to form an opinion, I followed blindly the promptings of my first love. 

Moved by such feelings and not bashful in giving expression to my 
sentiments, the sunny South was entirely top warm a climate for my gen- 
eral health, and I realized that I had better be making tracks for the 
North. My Danish friend's sympathies were decidedly Southern, and he 
was going to remain on that side of Mason and Dixon's line. Our personal 

relations were as warm as ever, 
but we had some hot political 
discussions which were, as are 
most arguments of that char- 
acter, mere gas over matters that 
neither of us knew the least 
about. We shook hands heart- 
ily when parting, and wished 
each all sorts of good luck to the 
other. I presented him with the 
revolver I had bought in St. 
Louis. 

"Here, my brother Dane," 
I said, as I struck a heroic 
attitude, "take this to remem- 
Jber me by, but let me beg of you 
for the sake of our father-land 
to turn its deadly contents into 




_/KK\vn.T. z£&&i 



IN REMEMBRANCE. 



your own brain, before you use it against the defenders of the glorious 
Flag of Liberty!" 

I was most anxious to be on the move, and acting without thinking of 
the old saying, on the queer principle that "the longest way round is the 
nearest way home,' , I shipped on a coasting vessel to Pensacola, Appala- 
chicola, and other Florida points, and finally brought up once more in New 
Orleans with about forty dollars in my purse. 

It was officially announced that March 14th was the last day on which 
a steamboat would be permitted to depart for the North. Two days pre- 
vious to that time I met a discharged soldier of the U. S. army, who was 
without means to get to his Northern home and friends, and going with 
him to the boat I secured and paid for his deck passage to Cairo, 111. A 
well dressed, keen looking individual was standing near the clerk's office at 
the time and witnessed the whole transaction, hearing also the conversa- 
tion incident thereto;- he saw my money and very probably overestimated 
the amount of it. 

This gentleman, after a short time, approached and entered into con- 
versation with me, indulging in many very complimentary remarks re- 
garding my liberality, etc., to the poor soldier ; u just what he had done 
himself hundreds and hundreds of times, he said," and as our acquaintance 
grew he became more and more u taken with me," and at last, I being 
"just the man he was looking for," he offered me a situation as overseer 
on his plantation at thirty dollars per month, house, horse, food, and no 
end of other inducements being included. His generosity was unbounded, 
and his political sentiments were, to a dot, the same as my own. 

Thinking I had better secure such a good place until I could save more 
money, and trust to luck to get North when flush with cash, I promptly 
accepted his offer and we parted, but not, however, until I had promised 
to meet him at 2 o'clock of that afternoon, at the St. Charles Hotel,to take a 
ride in his carriage and give an opinion about a new pair of horses he had 
just purchased. 

I was on time at the place of appointment to a minute ; there was my 

new friend and employer, and there 
also was a fine team, with coach- 
man in livery. 

With Chesterfield! an polite- 
ness, Mr. Spider invited Mr. Fly to 
enter the carriage ; proudly I did 
so, and he, after saying a few words 
to the driver, seated himself beside 
me. He then explained that be- 
fore going out on the Shell road to 
the lake, for a good dinner, he 
wished to drive to the Alabama 
depot to arrange for sending to his 
hotel a trunk that was there, for 
which he had written to his 
mother. 

I was only too happy to ride 
wherever he desired, and we tooled 
along to the depot, the gentleman 




THE SPIDER AND THE FLY, 



58 

then left me but returned in a few moments with a check for $100 (or 
what purported to he such) in his hand and asked if I could change it. I 
expressed my regret that I had not so much money with me. He was 
much annoyed at the prospective trouble of coming back again, he wanted 
$13 to make up, with what small notes he had, the amount of his freight 
bill. 

"Perhaps I could accommodate him with that trifling amount until he 
got his check cashed at the Lake Hotel, where he was well known." 

" Certainly I could, and would."" 

And I did. 

Then he stepped back into the depot, and I sat in the carriage and 
waited, and waited, and waited. 

But he didn't come back. 

After a good long while, coachman turned around, leaned down and 
over until he could see inside the carriage, and inquired if we " was agoin' 
to keep the bosses astandin' there all night." 

"I guess you'll wait until your master comes back,", said I, with 
dignity. 

" Master be blowed ! " replies Cabby, " that fellow ain't no master 
o' mine, I hain't got none. He's a sharp, that's wot that feller is, an' 
takin' a bird's eye view of it I should say he was a playin' you fur aflat." 

And that worldly-wise driver further continued. 

"But that. ain't nothin' to me noways, sharps er flats, ripe 'uns or 
green 'uns, tain't none of my funeral. Wot I want to know is, ef you got 
the coin ter pay fer the hire o' this hack." 

Then I became awake to the stern realities of my situation, and knew 
that I had been swindled. It was in vain I protested that I had not hired 
the carriage, had been invited to ride, etc., etc., Cabby remarked with 
firmness: 

" Don't know ner keer nothin' 'bout that, this here hack an' them ther 
hosses lies been hi use of you an' that other feller for over two hours. I 
ain't got him but I hev got you, an' I'm goin' to hev the hire of this hack 
an' them hoisses er ther'l be trouble." 

Sadly I paid him more than legal charges from my much diminished 
cash, and then, in a perfect fever of haste to quit a city where everybody 
and every action seemed to combine against me, I hurried to the levee, 
found the boat on which I had placed the soldier, secured a deck passage 
for myself, and was, an hour after, steaming away from the scene of my 
misfortunes and foolishness. 

Travelling on a deck-passage ticket, I was not entitled to meals, and 
could buy no food on the boat, and in the hurry and excitement of getting 
away I had never thought to provide rations. When the boat stopped at 
Baton Rouge, I hurried into that town to purchase food, feeling confident 
that I had time to lay in a supply and get back before the boat took in coal, 
that being its regular station for so doing. 

With a handkerchief well crowded with sundry eatables and a big loaf 
of bread under my arm, I returned to the landing place, but my boat was 
not there, and I could just manage to hail it and receive answer, short and 
pointed, to the effect that I could stay where I was. The steamer had 
started so soon as her freight for that place was landed and was taking in 
coal from a barge in tow at her side as she rushed away. 



59 



The loss of my fare and time was a very serious matter just then, but 
a still greater was that of my sailor's bag in which was all my clothing and 
a diary, fully written up, in which was recorded the 
history of my adventures and ramblings, all these were 
now lost, carried away by that miserable steamboat 
that seemed to say in every puff, kl Left ! left ! left! " 
There was but one course of proceedings open to 
me which was to board the next steamer coming up. 
In an hour or two I was again on my way and dame 
Fortune did me one good turn on this trip by making 
the eyes of the clerk blind to my presence ; that stern 
l| official never appearing to demand or collect my pas- 
sage money. I didn't hunt him very anxiously, and 
so travelled to my destination D. H. 

When I arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, I was dirty to 
the last degree and certain Vsmall deer, ' ' common among 
deck passengers, were making themselves entirely too 
familiar with my flesh and blood. I was disgusted at 
my condition and sought to remedy it, so I purchased a cheap outfit of 
underclothing and then proceeded to the poor man's bath place, the river. 
The tower of the grand suspension bridge, which now spans the Mississippi 
at that point, was then about thirty feet high, and getting down under its 
protection from the wind, I proceeded to disrobe and afterwards to bathe 
in the intensely cold water, where the ice in blocks of all sizes was grinding 
sullenly together. 

Certain persons had watched me as I made my way down to the water's 
edge, and when they saw me commence to undress, concluding that I in- 
tended suicide, they rushed to secure me, and it required considerable 
broken English from me to convince them that I really intended to only take 
a bath, then they let me have my own way, but 
considering the time, place and temperature, they 




LEFT. 




all concluded 
Dutchman. 



that I was a harmless, crazy 



FOR SCOURING, NOT 
SUICIDE. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

A GOOD SAMARITAN. 

My funds were now running very low; I had 
only about three dollars left — that this would 
soon be exhausted in Cincinnati I well knew. It 
was necessary that I should at once find work, 
but though I hunted industriously for it, I could 
not obtain employment in the city. 

With my earthly all in a very light bundle, I 
made my way into the country and found that 
there was plenty of work, but none that I could 
do. It seemed as though I had to answer ' 'No, ' ' 
to every question asked me. 

' ' Could I work in the garden ? " "No." 
" Could I take care of horses ? " "No." 
' ' Chop wood V ' ' 'No. " " Milk cows ? ' ' 



60 

"No." and so on through an endless string of interrogatories with the 
same unvarying answer to all. 

When asked " What can you do ? " I would reply "Nothing, only try 
to do as I am told." 

Willingness did not seem to be considered as an equivalent for knowl- 
edge and skill however, and I tramped on through Hamilton county, until 
I came to Fairfield, Indiana, where I paid my last money, twenty-five 
cents for lodgings, and the same amount for breakfast, and then continued 
my wanderings, destitute of destination as of means. 

Over roads that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and by turn- 
ings that faced me to every point of the compass, I pursued my weary way 
until I was brought to stand still on the banks of a small river. Though 
I had been a sailor and long lived close to deep water, yet I did not know 
how to swim. The barrier presented by this deep, rapid running water 
way, over which there was no bridge or signs of road leading to one, 
appeared to me to be a predestined halting place in my life, to which my 
erratic footsteps had been directed by an overruling Providence. 

" Thus far and no further, in thy present course shalt thou proceed ! " 
is what the rippling of the current seemed to sound within my ears. 

What influences possessed me I know not, but there was some change- 
ful process working powerfully within my mind. I asked myself, 
" What shall I do ? " knowing full well that I could invent no answer to 
the query. It really appeared as though I had reached the end of all things 
for me. 

Then the words of my mother, spoken when I bade her " Good-bye," 
as I recklessly cast from me her protecting care, and blindly plunged into 
a world of which I was ignorant, came crowding back upon my memory. 
"My son', trust to God, and make yourself worthy of his fatherly love; 
keep yourself pure, never he, be honest, do your duty to your masters, be 
sober, pray to be kept in the right way, and against all trials and troubles, 
snares, wickedness, and dangers of this world, He will guard and hold you 
safe." 

My mother was a woman always occupied busily with the cares of this 
life, who indulged in none of the sentimentality often f omid conspicuous in 
those who least practice what they preach ; but the true root of all good 
was in her, the knowledge of the way to peace and happiness she fully pos- 
sessed, and the occasion on which she had spoken to me, her very words, 
were injdelibly impressed upon my mind. 

The recollection of this incident, with all its attendant circumstances, 
banished from my brain every feeling or sense, but that of the utter aban- 
donment and desolation in which I now stood, and, 
entirely oblivious of the peculiar position in which I 
was placing myself, I fell upon my knees, my eyes 
streaming with tears, hands clasped ■in agony, and with 
lips long unused to the language of devotion, in my 
native tongue, I poured out my petition to the 
Almighty for pardon, guidance, aid and protection. 

What I said, how long I remained thus, I know 
not, so absorbed w T as I, so completely transported from 
all earthly considerations and surroundings, by the 
broke down, emotions of the hour, that even the noise made by the 




61 



arrival at the spot of a carriage, drawn by two horses, did not attract my 
attention, and when I at last returned to thoughts of mundane matters, I 
found myself the subject of curious contemplation on the part of an elderly 
gentleman seated in the vehicle which was standing close to me. His 
glance and air seemed not unkindly, and, as I sprang to my feet in great 
confusion he called to me. 

" My boy," said' he, "what is the matter ? " 
Now prayer had become, with me, such an unusual 
exercise, for years past, that I felt half ashamed to con- 
fess that I had been asking the help of God, and en- 
deavored to evade answering. 

My new acquaintance bade me jump into the car- 
riage beside him, which I did ; he then cautiously 
forded the river, and as he drove along, closely but 
pleasantly questioned me, skilfully leading me on into 
making confidences until, before we had travelled many 
miles, he was in full possession of the leading facts and 
^ incidents of my history, and I concluded by candidly 




REPLY. 



acknowledging that, having felt myself powerless, and 
trusting no longer in my own strength or the mercy of 
man, I had gone to the Father above, and begged for 
help and comfort. ■*• 

"And don't you think he sent it ? " the old gen- 
tleman asked. 

Soon he put the old question that I had so often 
answered. 

" "What can you do ?" 

And again came the ready, but most unsatisfactory 
answer, "Nothing." 
For once this reply did not frighten or quiet my new friend who appa- 
rently argued that a man or boy, who was willing to admit that he could 
do nothing, might be learned to do something ; and I doubt not but expe- 
rience had taught him that those who professed to be able to do everything, 
frequently were incapable of anything ; all of which complicated reasoning 
has come into my later understanding. I had the notion of it at that time 
but could not have expressed my ideas, and I am now giving the world the 
benefit of my matured wisdom. 

Before we reached his destination, this man, whom I believe was sent in 
answer to my prayer, had bargained with me that I was to come and live 
with him, to be paid six dollars a month " and found," to do nothing until 
it was discovered that I was fit to do something. 

The name of that good man I will here call, John Stuart, of Blank- 
ville, this also fictitious, Indiana, and that he never had cause to regret his 
generosity exerted in my behalf, it is my pride to feel conscious. I was, 
and am,— will ever be, very, very, grateful to him. 

I went into his home, rough and ignorant, but ready and anxious to 
learn, and it is really wonderful how, in a short time, I did contrive to 
pick up and properly attend to many matters of greater or lesser impor- 
tance, and all of which tended to get through more quickly with the rou- 
tine work of the place, and save the backs, hands and feet of others. I 
learned, or commenced to acquire, in that comfortable home many things 



62 



that were of great use to me afterwards, and I know that I did what was 
considered more than sufficient to repay the kindness that was ever exhib- 
ited towards me by each member of that family. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

I 'LIST FOR A "SODGER." 

The war cloud which I had seen rising in the South had now increased 
in size and blackness', until it overshadowed with i,ts gloom, every portion 
of our nation. 

The first gun fired at Sumpter echoed and re-echoed throughout the 
world, and in our own land, from California to the borders of Canada, the 
men of the North waked from their apathy, and girded themselves for 
the dread work before them. My native land retained that portion of my 
affection which every man must ever feel for the country of his birth, but 
the United States was the nation I had chosen, of all others, to be my 
country, under the Old Flag I had served, and I was going to permit no 
one, American or foreign born, to exceed me in devotion and service to it, 
so far as it lay in my power to perform my duty. 

There was work now that no one need ask me "Can you do it?" 
"Can you fight for the Stars and Stripes ? " Every impulse of my nature 
and thr@b of my heart told me, "You can do it ! " and I determined to go. 
I had not been one month with my kind employer, I was happy, fully 
content in a good home, and knew that he and his family were entirely sat- 
isfied with me, but, unimaginative and stolid as my mind had ever appeared 
to be, I felt this to be a call direct to me. 

The resolve "to go," meant everything in those days of national 
trouble. Mr. Stuart was in full sympathy with my patriotic fervor, and 
did nothing to deter me in my proposed action, and, on the 22d day of 
April, 1861, I signed my name and was enrolled in the company being 
raised by Captain John X, being the first recruit enlisted in the town of 
Blankville, Indiana. 

My master endorsed and applauded me, but there was trouble in his 
household, nevertheless, over my 'listing. I had become much less bear 
like in my movements and manners, had also ac- 
quired a certain skilf ulness about the farm work 
that was found of great service and Mrs. S. did not 
fancy the idea of losing the broad back and strong, 
willing hands, she found in her man of all work. 
Then there was a certain comely damsel in that 
house, whose bright eyes, glossy ringlets and pretty 
airs and graces, had excited my susceptible nature 
to an extent of which I was unconscious up to the 
time when in begging me not to "go," the water 
reservoirs of her pretty eyes freshened up the love 
germ in my heart until it grew and blossomed, with 
magic celerity into a most flourishing plant. 

But I had pledged my word to others and to my- 
self, and honor, duty, and inclination, all forbade 
that I should retract. 

I enlisted with Captain X. for three months' 
service, but the State or government, refused to accept his company for 




\ 



03 



that period ; he then arranged to attach his command to the Regi- 
ment Indiana Volunteers, though there seemed to be some doubt of even 
it being received ; finally he joined the 13th Indiana Infantry, and the 
company was mustered in on the 28th of April, 1861. Prayers were 
offered in my behalf in the church at Blankville, and though they may not 
have done me any good, I am sure they never caused me any harm, and I 
was always very thankful for them. 

We were placed in camps at Summans Station, and there received the 
necessary drilling to make us fit to shoot and be shot. 

The unvarying regularity of bacon as an article of diet soon l*egan to 
cause dissatisfaction among men who had always been accustomed r tp con- 
siderable variety of food, and the boys, more apt at acquiring th& Worst 
features of military life than the best, became proficient foragers before 
they were half soldiers. The hen roosts of the surrounding country suf- 
fered terribly. For a long time I held out manfully against any unlawful 
appropriation of food, refusing to touch, taste, or handle. I would neither 
cook or eat the fowls gathered in midnight raids, though daily . the sight 
and smell of fresh, fat, tender, white chickens, roast, broiled, fried and 
stewed, as brought against or in contrast to the half rancid, strong old 
bacon, proved a terrible and continual temptation, and one day when the 
"skippers" in the pig meat issued from the commissary were big enough 
to get up and bark at one, I fell frorn grace, and receiving as my share, two 
out of twelve " appropriated" chickens. I ate the pan at one sitting, and 
ever after clamored for all I could get. 

In order to vary the dull routine of camp life and to obtain funds for 
extra food and luxuries, we organized a show or entertainment, the per- 
formers being men of the regiment. Tickets of admission, 25 cents each, were 
sold through the country thereabouts, and we had a roaring house. There 
was every kind of talent, good, bad and indifferent, especially of the two 
latter grades. I appeared professionally as " The man of Iron," and made 
my title clear to that high sounding designation by driving 
pins into my limbs, putting red-hot irons on my tongue for, 
three seconds and other old fashioned tricks. 

The show cleared for us over all expenses, thirteen dol- 
lars, of which I received twenty-five cents, the boys ex- 
pending the entire balance for whiskey, as to indulgence in 
which I was less subject to temptation, and possessed more 
power of resistance, than in regard to chickens ; conse- 
quently I did not participate or enjoy any portion of the 
big drunk, free fighting, damages and splitting headaches 
that followed the expenditure of our fund "for extra food 
and luxuries." 

Our command was moved to Eichmond, Indiana, and 
it was stated once more that our company was to be trans- 
ferred to the regiment in which it had first' tried to find 
place ; but the change was not effected, and for three years 
=1 we formed part of the 13th Indiana, led by Colonel Jerry 
]j Sullivan. 

The captain of my company was a most excellent offi- 
the man or cer, a veteran of the Mexican war, in which he had lost an 
ikon, arm, as brave a man as ever lived, to whom fear was un- 




.,64 

known. We were stationed for instruction at Camp Sullivan, Indianapolis, 
until July 4th, 1861, when we were transported to Grafton, Va., and there 
remained for two days while preparing for our first march, which brought 
us, on the 9th, to the foot of Kich Mountain. 

Our uniform at that time consisted of a blue jean suit, the jacket be- 
ing short and shapeless, and we looked like a lot of overgrown charity- 
school boys, when without arms and equipments. At one o'clock on the 
morning of July 11th, with three days' rations in haversacks, our cartridge 
boxes filled with "buck and ball," and entirely new sensations under our 
blue jean jackets, the 13th Indiana formed into line knowing that in all 
human probability there were some who would not answer roll call that 
night. . 

We were going to fight. Well, that's what we were there for. 

It is no easy thing for even the veteran soldier to prepare calmly for a 
death struggle in the co]d, damp atmosphere and darkness of the hour after 
midnight. It is an entirely different affair from the hurry, dash, excite- 
ment and life of a daylight " fall in" at the long-roll. " There are few 
men," said the great Napoleon, "possessed of the two o'clock in the 
morning courage;" and any soldier who has passed through an active cam- 
paign will admit the severe strain of such moments ; and now we, almost 
to be called raw recruits, were mustering in silence under that cold, calm 
moon, and sparkling stars, to move forward for initiation in scenes of 
bloody violence. 

Our direct commander was General Rosecrans, and after all the 
battalions had arrived he placed himself at the head of the column ; then 
came a weary march of thirteen miles over one of the most villanously bad 
roads that ever tortured foot of man or beast, and we found ourselves in 
the rear of Rich Mountain, looking up at the frowning batteries erected by 
the Confederates under General Garnet. Sharp fighting ensued, and I 
could and would gladly spin a long yarn about that fight, but I am not 
writing a history of the war, or account of any battles but my own, so I 
will only say that our side was victorious, and we 13th Indianians came 
out of our first engagement victorious, and with corresponding proud 
elation. 

A favorite question with non-combatants is : " How did you feel when 
you were going into and during your first fight ? " 

For myself only can I answer and say, that my feeling on the occasion 
mentioned were mixed and various. Forming into line in the darkness 
and chill, I was, to a considerable degree " shivery ;" I said my prayers 
with a hearty good will, I went through every prayer that ever I knew, 
heard, or could invent, and I meant every word I uttered. When we were 
once before the enemy I own that I felt a little " skeered;" I did not want 
to be killed or wounded, not even for my country. After the firing began 
and comrades would now and then drop around me, pity for their fate and 
prayers for my own safety came into my mind, but soon the work became 
general and hot, tearing my cartridges I got powder into 'my mouth, the 
smoke of battle tingled my nostrils, my mad commenced to rise, I thirsted 
for revenge, I wanted to get at 'em. I loaded and blazed away with fierce 
determination to do all the damage I could. By the time the order was 
given to charge, I had forgotten all about danger and rushed on with the 
line, full of fight and fury. 



65 




And when we charged and drove thern ! Ah ! the glory of seeing them 
flying before us, and feeling to the thrill of victory I That was absolute, 
pure, and perfect ecstacy. Our command was 
actively engaged in that battle for over one hour 
and the whole time did not seem to me to be ten 
minutes. 

Now you know how I felt in my first battle. 
The next day we were to tackle another 
strong position of the enemy, but that night 
when we went into camp, I was one of those de- 
tailed for picket duty on the outer line. It 
stormed fearfully all night, and it was a pretty 
severe lesson to a new soldier to have a long 
rough march, hard fighting, and picket duty, 
without overcoat or blanket, and in the hardest 
kind of ram, all crowded into one twenty-four 
hours. But the experience did us good. 

When daylight came our line was formed 
giving- it to 'em. and we moved upon the enemy, observing, of 
course, all proper precautions. To our surprise there were no returns of 
our opening shots, and in a short time we discovered that the foe had de- 
camped during the darkness,, taking with them 
their ammunition and arms, but leaving be- 
hind all their baggage, camp equipage and 
rations. 

The retreating forces was one of the crack 
^Southern organizations, that early in the war 
jrt> was composed of men of wealth, and they 
J4 were splendidly provided with everything that 
H^; money could purchase. These South Caro- 
" lina cadets had been obliged to leave behind 
them a profusion of luxurious appointings, 
fine clothing, dainties in food and liquors, 
royal cigars, canned fruits and meats, every- 
thing in fact that two years later the poor, 
gallant fellows, and all belonging to them had 
almost forgotten the use or taste of. 

The letters we found from the sweethearts, 
wives and families to those who were in the 
field were one and all filled with expressions 
and sentiments of such devotion to "The 
picket— not pic-NIC. Cause," that it was easy to understand the 
influences which so intensely "fired the Southern heart." 





CHAPTER XV. 

OF BATTLES, BULLETS, BAYONETS AND BLOOD. 

Our regiment's next station was at Beverly, Va. ; from there we moved 
to HutchinviUe and then to Elkwater, where our duty was mostly march- 
ing back and forth to Cheat Mountain, though there were small skirmishes 
constantly occurring to keep one's blood from stagnating. 

At HutchinviUe I was taken ill with what seemed to me a complica- 
tion and conglomeration of all the diseases incident to camp life, and all 
the ills that flesh is heir to and on the face of the earth I don't think at that 
time, there was a more miserable poor fellow than myself. 

I was blessed with a good hearted comrade, named Frank McCoy; he 
went out one day and rooted around until he gathered a double handful of 
boneset and made it into the strongest tea possible ; I put in my whole 
week's ration of sugar to sweeten it, but it still was strong and bitter 
enough to raise a blister on a side of sole leather, and I drank it. 

Shortly after I had put the terrible concoction inside of me, the long 
roll was sounded in our camp, the rattle of small arms was heard at the 
front, and it was evident that a very brisk little fight was going on. 

I was sure, two seconds before hearing all this, that I could not have 
moved a yard to save me, but when these sounds saluted my ears, I seized 
my musket, and dragged myself or crawled over the ground to where our 
line was formed. The excitement, exertion, or boneset, or all three 01 
them, threw me into a profuse perspiration, and restored the healthy action 
of my system so that in three or four days I reported as fit for duty. 

The summer campaign was rather lacking in stirring incidents, but 
during October we were started out to Hollow Fork to gun for guerrillas. 
By orders we were supplied with three days' rations, but as we were out 
just three times three days, in a country where there was little or nothing 
to forage, we were very nearly starved ; we did get some corn meal, which 
we made into mush, but as we had no salt, it w^as very poor grub indeed. 
At one time I thought I had struck a bonanza ; at an old man's house 
was discovered a hidden barrel of bear 
meat, and the boys made short work of it ; 
I started for my share among the last and 
had secured a good big piece, when our cap- 
tain, who had heard of the proceedings, 
made his appearance. He put his pistol 
almost in my face and told me that if I 
didn't drop that bear meat, he'd. drop me ; 
he would have clone it in a moment, and I 
knew it. I dropped the meat. 

By the time we returned to camp from 
that scout, the miserable, shoddy leather 
shoes furnished the soldiers, were worn 
completely off the feet of myself and many 
others, and we marched over -miles and 
miles of rough, frozen and snow covered 
drop it. roads, leaving the blood tracks of our 

naked, cut and bruised feet to mark our trail. 

We were next ordered to cut logs and build huts in preparation for 




67 



going into winter quarters. Hardly had we completed our rough houses 
when we were marched off to Beverly, from whence, on December 11th, 
there started a battalion composed of ten men from each company of four 
regiments to make an attack on a body of the enemy, entrenched on the 
summit of the Allegheny mountains, fifty miles distant. In the detach- 
ment from my regiment I had the honor to be one. 

We reached the stronghold of the foe on the 13th, and at once engaged 
them. For three hours our force fought desperately and did all that men 
could do to win, but our opponents held an impregnable position, and after 
we had lost nearly one hundred and fifty men, our lines began to weaken, 
and when the fresh and brave Johnnies charged out from behind their 
works and " went for us " with a will, our boys became the most demor- 
alized crowd I ever got into, and every fellow at once started to the rear 
"to reorganize." 

The retreat at the first start of it took the form of a scattering foot 
race, every man for himself, etc. etc. , and as for my part in the procession 

after it turned tail I run. I had stood up 
to my work and fought like a man while 
all the others did, but when the panic set 
in, I caught the complaint bad, and when 
the movement to the rear began to assume 
the nature of a foot race I made up my 
jlp^ mind, all of it, and in a hurry ; that I 
was going to come out ahead if trying 
would do it, and I ran as I never had be- 
fore until I arrived at Beverly. 

It had taken 27 hours for our com- 
mand to reach the fighting ground ; I 
made the return trip " double quick " in 
k less than half that time. If unable to 
boast of my great -achievement in battle 
on that occasion I can at least brag of 
my record in the go-as-you-please foot 
race that followed, 
inglorious affair we were moved to Cum- 
the Baltimore and Ohio line, and several 
jolly little skirmishes served to keep us alive and active, especially one at 
Sir John's Run. The opening of 1862, found us encamped at Pawpaw 
Tunnel, under command of General F. W. Lander, who there died on 
March 2d, very suddenly, while preparing to resist a midnight attack on 
our station ; a true patriot and gallant a soldier as ever fought for the 
flag was this noble man. 

General James Shields then took command and under the veteran of 
Mexico's fame, we took part in the fight at Winchester, which commenced 
on the evening of March 22d, when we repulsed a force of the enemy un- 
der General Ashby. 

We were busy all that night with preparations for the contest, sure to 
come in the morning. Very early on the 23d, a small Confederate force 
appeared before us ; it was evident that the Johnnies were "laying low," 
but our artillery opening upon their position soon unmasked them ; out 




TO THE REAR — Wk TO RE- 
ORGANIZE." 

In a short time after this' 
berland, as railroad guards on 



68 



they came and a square fight, of the hammer and tongs order ensued, dur- 
ing which, by an attack on the left flank of the enemy, we got them where 
we wanted them for a general attack, which was made at five o'clock in 
the afternoon with great success, we capturing guns, small arms and 
prisoners in large lots. General Shields was wounded in the arm and we 
lost many men, the 81st and 110th Pennsylvania regiments catching it par- 
ticularly hot. I was detailed with a party after the fight to hunt up and 
carry off the field the wounded men ; our colonel was with us for a time, 
and as we were moving about, some poor chap cried out that he had his 
leg broken, to come arid help him, to which appeal the colonel replied : 

" Shut up your noise over a little thing like that, here's a poor fellow 
with the whole top of his head oif, and he don't utter a groan." 

The morning after our battle we marched to New Market, where we 
captured many stragglers. Then followed a season of activity ; marching 
over Luray Valley to Port Royal and other places, picket duty and small 
engagements. 

One day I crossed the Luray river with a portion of my company, to 
' ' feel the enemy. ' ' Instead of waiting for us, they came before we expected 
them and made us feel them in a manner decidedly unpleasant. By some 
blunder our party was caught between cross-fires and a scratch gravel 
change of base was the only way out of the fix. I ran away again, as fast 
and far as I could, being brought to a dead halt by reaching the banks of 
a river. I had then the choice of dying by water through drowning, or 
giving up the ghost through fire of the pursuing enemy. But I did not 
desire to die at all. 

Fortune sent me a preserver in the shape of a badly scared cavalry 
man who was urging his horse to the utmost. I begged his aid and he 

took charge of my musket while 
I' seized hold of the horse's tail 
and was towed through the 
stream to safety on the opposite 
side. I have noted this incident 
as it gives me opportunity to re- 
mark that it was my most (horse) 
hair-breadth escape of the war. 
We were taken by rail to 
Alexandria, and there took trans- 
ports to Harrison's Landing, 
where we arrived July 2d, just 
in time to cover the retreat of 
A (horse) hair breadth escape. McClellan from Malvern Hill. 
At Harrison's Landing, little was done but parade, drill and build 
fortifications. It was while stationed here that, one day on picket duty, I 
blundered in attempting to jump over a ditch, and fell inside instead, sus- 
taining an injury (Hernia), which proved most serious in its results. 

I was treated in camp and afterwards sent to Hampton Hospital at 
Portress Monroe, where I remained until, after due inspection and inves- 
tigation, I was pronounced by the IT. S. Medical Authorities to be Incura- 
ble, and was therefor honorably discharged from the military service in 
October, 1862— another singular coincidence, all my U. S. discharges hav- 
ing been given in that month of the year. 




69 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TO DENMARK AND BACK. 

During all my soldier life, I had, from time to time, sent to my good 
friend and former employer, Mr. Stuart, a portion of my pay, and he now 
held in trust for me the sum of sixty dollars. 

I felt a strong inclination to start for Blankville at once, bright-eyed 
Miss Maggie being the most powerful magnet in that direction ; for not 
only did pleasant recollections of the past continually enter my mind, but 
there was the tempting future to contemplate, and distance lent additional 
enchantment to the view ; I longed to learn if the hopes I fondly cherished 
could ever arrive at happy fruition. 

But I well knew that, with the small amount of money at my com- 
mand, I could do nothing as a farmer, unless I again engaged as a laborer, 
and this did not suit my ideas ; I was becoming more ambitious in regard 
to situation in life, so I restrained my powerful desire to take the first train 
for Indiana, and resolved to obey an equally ardent impulse which I had 
long been trying to keep under control. 

The truth of the matter was, for months I had been under a fit of the 
"homesicks " ; for years, ever since I had left my mother, I had earnestly 
longed to once more see ner, though my circumstances had never been, for 
any extended time, sufficiently prosperous to warrant me in acting in 
accordance with the promptings of my heart. I felt now as though I had 
earned the right to enjoy a rest and holiday, and I decided to go back to 
Denmark and astonish my mother, brothers and sisters. 

Having positively resolved upon the trip, I next formed myself into a 
committee of the whole on ways and means. I wished to save every cent 
that I could, in order that I might make some show of means, liberality 
and responsibility before and with my family and acquaintances. Not to 
spend a single unnecessary cent was my great object until my arrival in my 
native land, and I resorted to every honorable expedient to save the 
pennies. 

At Buffalo, as I was returning from the army, 
I met a party of drovers and by assisting them in 
taking care of their cattle, I earned a free passage 
to New York. In that city I equipped myself 
for the proposed journey, purchasing a good out- 
fit of well made clothing in Broadway. 

A silver watch also I bought on the Bowery, 
from a gentleman whose features very plainly in- 
dicated his religious belief, and whose profuse 
recommendations of the excellence of the "ticker" 
were fully born out in its subsequent performances. 
I was determined that my mother and others 
should see that the " stupid dunder head " of the 
family did not return, after his many years of 
wandering in the fashion and fix of the Biblical 
Prodigal Son. Even though I had been brought 
mighty low down in my time, and even very glad 
at one time to sleep with a pig, I was not fool 
dot PEUDivuL enough to return with the husks and. the wallow 
votch." clinging to me and go grunting about to prove the 




ro 



truth of the old gossips who had once vowed that I " would come to be 
hanged.'' 

In planning or seeking economical methods of transportation, I was 
fortunate enough to discover that by serving as dish-washer or scullion 
on board a Hamburg steamer I could obtain a free passage across. I 
applied for and obtained such a situation and made the trip in that capacity. 
The vessel touched at several points before reaching Hamburg and I 
was anxious to leave it at a point from which I could most quickly reach 
those from whom I had been so long parted. I was told that if I quitted 
the ship before she finished the voyage I would receive no pay for my ser- 
vices. I had not expected anything but free passage and though I would 
much liked to have had the money, yet now I was near my family I could 
not restrain my impatience, so I went ashore at the quarantine stoppage 
and made quick time for my old home, thus sacrificing my wages. And 
soon I wished I had curbed my desires and taken in the cash. 

At last I was at my mother's ; neither she nor my brothers recognized 

me, but a few words and mom- 
ents cleared away all the clouds 
that years had formed before 
their eyes and my welcome was 
as hearty as the most exacting 
affection could desire. 

I was given the freedom of 
the town in a social sense, and 
I did not spare the contents of 
my purse in returning the hos- 
pitality showered upon me by 
my family, friends and neigh- 
bors. Everybody now protested 
that they had always seen " the 
making of a fine and successful 
man in me." In fact, I was 
rather too profuse c in expendi- 
u don't you know me?" ture, and, as I saw my cash 

melting away like snow before a summer sun, I said unto myself, in choice 
American slang, " My son, its time for you to git up and git." 

To save the humiliation of confessing that I had exhausted my means, 
I made excuse that my permit to remain in the country would soon expire; 
this was the truth, but not the whole truth. I had left but one $5 bill ; it 
would take all of that to land me in Hamburg, and once there I would be 
obliged to trust to luck to obtain passage back to the United States. 

Bidding a most affectionate farewell to relatives and friends, I started 
forward to meet and grapple with my troubles. When I reached Hamburg, 
I made my home at a very second rate boarding house and most diligently 
sought to ship on some vessel and earn my passage over the Atlantic. But 
my earnest efforts met with no success, and I was very soon destitute. 

While studying to find a way out of my difficulties, I suddenly remem- 
bered the great admiration my eldest brother had expressed of my watch. 
I could think of no other way to extricate myself but by sacrificing my 
pride and the " ticker " at the same time, so I wrote to brother, confessed 
my poverty, and told him that if he would send me money equivalent to 




1 



$7.50 of Uncle Sam's cash, I would forward him the time-piece by mail. 
He complied with my request, and I purchased with his remittance a ticket 
on a steamer to South Hampton, England, which was as far as the amount 
would pay my way. 

I had taken this action in the hope that Providence or luck would 
assist me at South Hampton, in finding some means of getting to America. 
Before we reached my stopping point, I heard that one of the coal heavers 
on the vessel had been so crippled as to be incapacitated for work so I at 
once made application and was installed in his place, being thus enabled to 
keep on with my journey. 

With the hardest kind of hard labor I paid for my transportation in 
that ship, for she had been injured by collision with icebergs on the coast 
ofNew Foundland, and was in a very leaky condition ; so leaky, that we 
\#io had to shovel coal were obliged to stand over knee deep in foul smell- 
ing, slimy, black bilge water all the time we were at work. 

Through fire and water we contrived to make our way safely, and in 
March, 1863, 1 again landed in New York so completely "dead broke"* 



% % 



that I was forced to sell my pocket comb to 
an American citizen of African descent (who 
had no earthly use for it, in his black wool), 
for the small sum of three cents wherewith 
to pay my passage on the ferry boat over into 
New Jersey. 

Once in the State of sand and mosquitoes 
I made a bee line for the plank road that 
leads to Newark and took up my march in 
that direction. The only person who re- 
sponded to my appeals for work and food was 
a market gardener who offered me a chance 
to gain plenty of the former and little of the 
latter, and with him I engaged. 

By this time my clothing was in a most 
dilapidated condition, the wind went whistling 
through every portion of my tattered raiment 
as freely as water will run through a sieve ; 
the blighting March breezes played hide and 
seek in and under my flattering rags and 
mighty hard up. seemed to blow through and through and 

freeze my flesh, blood, bones and marrow. 

Verily, it was a cool reception I met on returning to the land of my 

adoption. 





72 
CHAPTER XVII. 

MORE VARIATIONS ON THE OLD .TUNE. 

I had tried to sustain with dignity my character ^s a "self-made 
man " during my visit to Denmark, now I found myself a self -unmade in- 
dividual in the land of liberty, equality and fraternity, where u one man's 
as good as another, and often a deal better ; " where " any smart young 
fellow must get along and grow rich ; " all of which facts or fictions I had 
spouted out and insisted upon to my Danish audiences, when, well clothed, 
with money to spend, a watch chain to play with, I had posed as an illus- 
tration of the prosperity which could be acquired by "any smart young 
fellow " in the great and glorious Star Spangled Union. 

Here I now was, in land of the free and home of the brave, on an 
equality with vagrants of the lowest class, toiling, hard as ever did mny 
black slave; with half clothed shivering anatomy and toil racked bones on a 
Jersey truck patch, just keeping body and life together on the crumbs that fell 
from the miserly table of my master; Lazarus was a millionaire in compar- 
ison to me. This was the role I was now filling after a brilliant starring 
tour abroad. 

My work on the truck patch was to dig out of the frozen ground the 
root vegetables, carrots, etc., etc., to wash them in icy water, and get them 
ready for city market. The generous master had furnished me a blanket 
about as thick, warm and holy as a fish net, and I was kindly permitted to 
sleep in the barn along with the other half fed animals. 

In this man's service I slaved and starved, froze and famished for 
seven days ; then I could stand it no longer ; I could certainly do no worse 
and would very likely do much better out on the tramp, and out on the 
tramp I determined to go. When I informed the root grubber of my in- 
tended departure, he only remarked that " it's all right, you ain't no 'count 
anyway." and he took advantage of my voluntary retirement by refusing 
to pay me any wages, claiming that I had contracted to stay a month. 

Once more on the road without a cent, the necessity was forced upon 
me of resorting to my old tactics as a tramp, and well did these serve me 
at my first call upon them. I made application at a house for dinner, and 
was shortly told that they had no food cooked and were not likely to have 
for an indefinite period. But I was very, very hollow inside, and so I 
thought I would try and see what blarney would do to f urnish up my 
empty bread basket. 

" Oh, miss ! " said I, to the sour-faced vixen who was turning away, 
" never mind the grub, I'll worry along somehow, but do just let me tell 
your fortune, I see it in your bright eyes and pretty face. I can tell any 
one's fortune the moment I see them, it's a natural gift I have, my family 
is all that way." 

"Oh, you get out !" said she, stopping and decidedly molified, "I don't 
believe in no sich nonsense." 

" Now just look here, my dear young lady," put in I, quickly, "listen 
to me for just three minutes, and then if you don't own up that I'm a hocus 
pocus, seventh son of a seventh son, you can call the dog and I'll let him 
make a light lunch on what little meat there is left on my bones. My 
mother was a real genuine gypsy queen right from Egypt, and each of her 
children has to travel and beg food for seven years before they are given 



•3 




THE 



their fortune ; my pilgrimage will be over next month, and if I don't starve 
to death before then, I will be worth millions." 

"Oh, git out ! "again said the woman, though evidently puzzled and 
curious, " what do I care for all four stuff and gibberish ! " 

"Just wait one moment, Miss, just one moment! " I exclaimed, and 
partly closing my eyes and motioning with my hands, I slowly muttered: 

"I see, I see, a young man with dark hair, 
and a pretty girl ; why, it's you ; and there 
is a church, and a minister waiting for a wed- 
ding, and, there is something — a woman — 
comes in between the girl and the man — now 
she comes on and now she goes off — I never 
can see futures well in the open air — I could 
see her face plain if I was in a room." 

All this time I was slyly watching the 
foolish face and could see that I had struck on 
something so near the truth that it would pass 
muster for that article, so I opened my eyes 
and returned her stare of amazement with a 
look of confidence. 

"How's that?" I asked, "Aint that 
getting the seventh son business down pretty 
fine?" 

"Why, why ; how did you know ? " she 
slowly said, and then, "come round to the 
kitchen door.'' 

I went around to and in through the kitchen door ; with that 
female I "made myself solid," and Irevictualed my stowage compartment 
until I could pack away no more, then I departed promising to see her 
later and to reveal all the future had in store for her. 
I havn't been back yet, though. 

That night was a fearfully stormy time ; in the words of the poet, 
"fust it blew, an' then it snew, an' then begun to friz," and I struck for 
the railroad track, jumped the first freight train that came along, fortu- 
nately escaped detection as I clung, cold, wet and miserable, huddled up 
on the bumper between two cars, until I was carried to Camden, JST. J. 

I had left from my European trip a pocket 
knife that cost two shillings; this I sold for a few 
pennies and paid my ferriage over to Philadelphia, 
there I went at once to the good friend, Gottleib, 
who had before received me, when in an equally 
bad fix, and he again gave me warm welcome, feed- 
ing and lodging me gratis. As he knew it would 
be impossible for me to obtain employment in the 
scare-crow condition of my clothing, the whole of 
which would hardly have made a wad for a big gun, 
he fixed me up decently in attire, and for fourteen 
days I hunted in every quarter of that city for 
work and wages. 

Fearing that even if I did not wear out my 
welcome I would be too much of a tax upon the 



: seventh son" 
business. 




THE "TROTTER 

CASES." 




limited means of my generous friend, I told him that it was useless to re- 
main in Philadelphia, and if he would furnish me a pair of shoes I woidd 
once more try fortune in the West. He promptly provided the "trotter 
cases " and I started off. 

After seven days' travel, I brought up again in Blankville, Blanklin 
Co. , Indiana. My reception by the Stuart family was as kind as I could 
wish, though my heart was saddened by the very evident change plainly 

noticeable in the manner my cherished one re- 
sponded my demonstrations. I hadpursuaded 
myself that I had a very strong hold upon her 
affections, but it was soon made perfectly clear, 
most unmistakably certain to my very unwill- 
ing mind that no trace of tenderness for me 
now existed in her heart, while a good stout 
lump of the same was there for somebody else. 
I soon fell into the old routine about the 
place of Mr. Stuart, and turned my hand to a 
multitude of odd jobs ; but the keen, constant 
interest in everything I said or did, which had 
been manifested by the family when I pre- 
viously lived there, was now wanting ; during 
'my absence other persons and affairs had re- 
placed me in the front rank of their life, and 
"where are now the while they were as kind and pleasant as it was 
hopes I cherished ? " possible to be, yet there was that wanting with- 
out which it was no home of contentment for me. 

In a few days, I told the Stuart family that I should go to Chicago and 
try to obtain work there, so with many good wishes from all, I started for 
that city, and on arrival started out after employment, meeting with no 
success, being rejected on account of my disability, when I tried to re-en- 
list in the army, and getting very hard up. 

Hardly expecting to succeed, I presented myself as a recruit for the 
naval service. Of course the injury which caused my discharge and kept 
me out from the army was discovered when examined by the medical offi- 
cer, but when he reported the fact to the shipping master, a veteran cap- 
tain, that good natured soul said, " Oh, pass him anyhow, he's an old salt 
and worth a dozen green horns." So I passed and once more wore the 
navy blue. 

This time I was destined to 
be a fresh water sailor. With a 
squad of other tars, I was sent 
to Cairo, 111., and put on the 
gun boat Conestoga, Thomas 
Selfridge, commander, but on 
this vessel I remained for a very 
short time, being transferred to 
gun boat ~No. 13, Fort Hine- 
man, Captain Pierce. 

It was not long before I was 
the captain, gun, and crew. made captain of a gun, and 




75 



awarded other positions as rewards of merit, which I filled creditably and 
retained until, in an unlucky moment, it was discovered that I was an 
artist in the culinary preparation of beans ; that I could cook beans with- 
out burning them. "What sad memories were recalled as I reflected upon 
the miseries through which I passed while acquiring such skill. 

I was promoted from captain of a gun to be assistant cook, and my 
great talents were so evident and so highly appreciated that, in a little 
while I was made chief of the galley, with the ex- 
tra pay and all allowances, privileges, etc., to 
which that important functionary is through law 
, and custom fully entitled. 

The duty of our vessel was to act as picket 
guard along the Mississippi, and take our share in 
such general fighting as we could pick up. 

We were at Yicksburg on that memorable 
4th of July, when General TJ. S. Grant gobbled 
Pemberton and his army, and the next day we lay 
off Port Hudson, while a like ceremony was being 
enacted within its line of fortifications. 

At Ellis' Cliff below Natchez, Miss., we took 
a turn at river guard duty, and then our boat 
formed part of the equipment of General X. P. 
Banks when, in his unfortunate Red River expe- 
dition, he acted as quartermaster for the Confed- 
erate forces in that section, by allowing them to 
scoop up all the army and private supplies and 
baggage of his division. 

"We were one of the fleet of Admiral Porter, 
at Alexandria, La., when the Rebs tried to leave 
promoted. our boats stuck in the mud by drawing the water 

from the river. The practical knowledge and skill of a western ex-lumber 
man, Lieut. Col. Bailey, acting engineer of the 19th army corps, enabled 
us to escape by the construction of a dam, such as is used to "boom " logs 
through the western rivers, and through such means saved the entire fleet. 
During this time we had many fights with the enemy posted behind 
shore batteries. One of these engagements was a decidedly hot affair, and 
we were raked and riddled in a most effective manner. This was near 

Port De Russy; we had on 
board our craft beside our own 
men, the crew of the gun boat 
Eastport, which had been 
sunk by a torpedo, and of the 
combined crews in the fight men- 
tioned, over fifty were killed and 
Ha large number wounded. 

At the gun over which T 
served as captain, a Parrot can- 
non of the largest size, there 
were eleven men killed out of the 
twenty-two who manned it. 
The deck had to be continually 





HOT WORK AT FORT DE RUSSY. 



76 

fresh sanded, so slippery did it become from the excessive and constant 
flow of blood. The boilers and machinery of the boat had cotton bales 
piled around for protection, but the hot fire soon ignited this, and we 
were obliged to throw it overboard ; our vessel was. hulled thirteen times 
by cannon balls, peppered completely by musket shots and so crippled, that 
we were forced to withdraw from action and maka our way slowly, like a 
big floating hearse, to Alexandria. 

I still retain a most vivid recollection of that fighti 




CHAPTER XYIII. 

NEW TRAILS, TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS. 

While in the section referred to in the last chapter, we captured in a 
Bayou two Confederate steamboats, loaded with several thousand bales of 
cotton, a commodity then worth a high price in our own and the English 
markets. 

These prizes made our hearts jubilant, all hands and the cook being 
busy figuring up the probable amount of prize money they would receive, 
and the fun they would have in spending it. 

But there is a saying in the navy that prize money is strained, for its 
distribution, through a ladder ; that the officers get all dropping through, 
and Jack receives only what lodges on the rounds. My share of our rich 
booty was exactly fifteen dollars ; there may have been more due and 
assigned me, but that is the entire sum I received from the agent who col- 
lected my claim. 

On the eighth day of July, 1864 ; after serving one year and eight days, 
I was again honorably discharged from the naval service, and took passage 
up the river for Cairo, 111. 

On the way, our boat was fired into by a party of guerrillas on the 
shore, a favorite practice of those outlaws. It might be supposed that I, 
having "been through the mill," in both army and navy, was calmly 
indifferent to these demonstrations. Nothing of the kind ; I argued to 
myself that, being now out of service, if I got killed it would be of no 
benefit to the country or myself; if I was wounded, I would not be pen- 
sioned and the doctor's bill would come out of my pocket, and so I hunted 
the spot on that boat where in my judgment a bullet was least likely to find 
its way, and there I stowed myself and kept so stowed until all danger was 



The barbarous habit of firing on unarmed boats was kept on this river 
until the gangs poured a volley into the little steamer Mittee Stevens, 
when she was going to Red River with a lot of captured Coirf ederate 
officers to be exchanged; there were a number of these killed, and then 
active measures were taken to put a stop to the murderous proceeding. 

At Cairo I was paid off, and with several hundred dollars in hand I 
proceeded to New York, where I purchased a steerage passage in a steamer 
for Aspinwall, paying therefore two hundred dollars, my objective point 
being San Francisco, California. 

Upon arrival at Aspinwall, with others I started across the Isthmus of 
Panama, halting on our way at Acapulco, so that we did not reach San 
Francisco until August 4th, 1864. 

After unsuccessful search for employment in the city, I found work at 
the salt works, near Mount Eaton, thirty miles up the bay from 'Frisco 
and here I did well so long as I stuck to work I could do and made no 
attempt to branch out. 

But one day the old luck instigated me to try my hand at taking the 
place of engineer, to run a little dummy engine used to haul trucks loaded 
with salt over a wooden railroad. I brought the machine to a halt by put- 
ting too heavy a load on the cars, then in starting again I managed to get 
my left foot under the wheels, which passed directly over and left it mashed 
flat as a pancake, and that settled my business completely. 



78 




There was neither comfortable accommodations or medical attendance 
to be obtained at the Salt Mines, so the next day I was bundled into the 

stage and taken back to San Francisco, where, 
boarding being expensive, and the doctors' 
charges high, my cash account soon began to 
present a most discouraged and weary aspect, 
and in a spirit of self-preservation, I hobbled 
to its portals in search of comfort and admis- 
sion in the City Hospital, where I was re- 
ceived and remained until cured. 

It was the old, old story repeated, when 
once again I could use my feet, and use them 
I did, tramping through the streets hunting 
for work and finding none. 

After many days of ill success, I at last 
found a boss, a rather " off-color " man and 
brother he was, and his occupation was the 
manufacture of soap. 

John Dyer had no prejudice against me 
because I was about ten shades whiter in skin 
than himself; he considered u a white man 
was just as good as a nigger, so long as he 
behaved himself decent," and he gave me 
work at which I stuck and (excuse the word) 
crippled in foot and stunk for about two months." 

finances. A combined attack of the rambling and 

the war fevers then took hold of my brain and bones, the large bounties 
offered to all men who would join the Second California regiment, then 

being organized, tended to greatly 
aggravate the disease, and finally con- 
triving to pass muster without rejec- 
tion by the surgeon, I buttoned for 
the second time about my body the 
blue and brass and came to a ' 'shoulder 
arms." 

For nine months our command 
lay in Presidio, near Fort Point; 
while there we received the news of 
the assassination of President Lincoln, 
'[ our feelings when told of this horror 
| can be easily imagined. 

The first move of the regiment 
was to Wilmington, about twenty 
miles from Los Angeles, near Drum 
Barracks, then over the great sandy 
an "off-color" boss. desert, we marched to Fort Yuma, 

stopping for a few days of rest in the bottom lands of Colorado, under the 
shadow of the Hill of Fort Yuma. 

Then away again along the Gila River and through the rocky desert, 
to and past Oatman's Flat, the bloody spot where an unfortunate family 
of that name were inhumanly tortured and butchered by the Indians. 




Kjvct— 



79 



Oft again, over and through the great 56 miles of desert plain, desti- 
tute of everything but inesquite trees, cactus, tarantulas and rattlesnakes ; 
marching ever on, no resting place of grateful shade to cheer us, toiling over 
mile after mile to Maricopa Wells, and then one more day's tramping 
brought us to Whilesville. 

This last named place is also known as Pima Village, and is a town 
inhabited by the Acabulta Tribe of Indians, who still retain the primitive 
manners and customs of their forefathers, but cultivate the soil and carry 
the wheat they raise to the mill. 

One unalterable Mecle and Persian law exists among this people ; any 
departure from chastity by a female of that tribe is punished with death; 
they keep a keen and continual watch, and the penalty invariably quickly 
follows detection. 

A striking illustration that Indian savageness was by no means crushed 

out or subdued in this tribe, was 
aif orded us by the sight of a dried body 
of an Apache warrior, which was 
hanging to or swinging from the limb 
of a tree, and was kept there to serve 
as a target and aid to the aboriginal 
schoolmaster in teaching the young 
Injun idea how to shoot. The dessi- 
cated subject seemed to have served a 
long term in Iris then position, or the 
arrow proficiency of the young redskins 
was wonderfully good, for the carcass 
of that warrior fairly bristled with 
barbs, sticking out at all points, in all 
directions, like "quills upon a fretful 
porcupine." 

Continuing our march we arrived 
at Tort Breckenridge, now Camp 
Grant, where we built huts, and there 
was established our headquarters. 

From Camp Grant we were sent 
out on several expeditions against 
marauding Indians ; a notable though 
short campaign of this kind being that 
of the ascent of the Arrow Wiper 
A subject full of fine points. Canyon, on which occasion our Colonel, 
George Wright, was guilty of, or attempted to execute an atrocity, which 
was a disgrace to civilization and an outrage on humanity. 

When we came within sight of the Indians for whom we were hunting 
our commanding officer ordered a white flag, a flag of truce, to be displayed, 
and the pursued people waited our coming in perfect confidence of their 
safety, for even an Indian understands and respects that signal of peace. 
As we moved up, the Colonel divided and disposed of his force in such a 
manner as would, or he thought it would entirely surround the poor crea- 
tures and cut off every means of escape, and then, to the astonishment of 
every human being on both sides, he gave orders for immediate and rapid 
firing. 




80 



As soldiers, we were bound to obey orders, and we blazed away. The 
Indians disappeared as though the ground had swallowed them up ; where 

they went, or how much they 
suffered from our firing I know 
not,but I do know that neither I 
or any of my comrades ever saw 
a dead Indian out of that lot, 
and if any of my own shots 
killed one of them, he must 
have been high up in the air, 
for in that direction were 
all my bullets sent, and I be- 
lieve every man of the party 
acted in the same way. 

Our entire rank and file 
were excited and indignant at 
the inhuman and unsoldierly 
act of the Colonel, and many 
of our men paid a terrible price 
in return for his treachery, an 




HIGH AIMS. 



invisible foe hung upon our flanks day and night, dropping our boys right 
and left. Woe to any poor fellow who straggled from our line, he was 
caught and tortured to death with all the refine- 
ment of savage cruelty, and the remains of his 
horribly mutilated body left as a warning to 
others. For the blood of every man thus slain, 
Colonel Wright was directly responsible. 

On our return to camp from this ill-fated 
scout, my irrepressible propensity to get myself 
into trouble, caused me to inaugurate a private 
war of my own, which resulted in my back having 
to suffer for the offences of my tongue. 

We had been living on short rations for con- 
siderable time, owing to much of the meat being 
so spoiled as to be unfit for consumption. Now 
officers receive money in lieu of the ration fur- 
nished the men, and they should and are in honor 
bound to subsist on provisions bought by them- 
selves,, but our Captain, Chauncy Fairchild by 
name, but fair in no other particle, made it a 
indiak yeng-eance. habit to take his supplies from those issued to the 
soldiers. 

To feed one man out of stores intended for fifty, takes a very small 
amount from each one of that party, but it is a very small business for an 
officer to engage in, and I was bound to protest against it, so I opened my 
mouth, and in language more plain than polite,more expressive than elegant, 
I gave vent to my opinion in regard to the Captain's meanness and dis- 
honesty ; and all that I said was duly and fully reported to him by one of 
his todies. 

Yery promptly and pointedly were charges arid specifications made out 
against me. A court martial was convened, and in less than no time a 




SI 



verdict of " Guilty " as to " conduct prejudicial to good order and military 
discipline " was recorded against my name. The sentence condemned me 

to thirty days' hard labor 
about the camp, and con- 
finement at night in the 
guard house, where there 
were two filthy Indian 
prisoners who were very 
much alive — also their blan- 
kets. 

My condemnation was 
duly carried out and served 
through, the dignity of my 
superior officer was upheld, 
companions in misery. discipline properly incul- 

cated, outraged regulations vindicated, and the Captain allowed without 
hindrance to steal the rations of his men. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

OUT OF THE BLUE AND INTO BUSINESS. 

Soon after I had served my sentence and been restored to duty, the 
regiment was relieved from duty at that post by the 14th United Slates 
Infantry, one of the new regiments of "Regulars " raised by Act of Con- 
gress after the war. 

The 14th United States Infantry was at that time, without exception, 
the most perfect collection of thieves, 
cowards, cut-throats, drunkards, gutter 
snipes and ""Whiskey Bums" of every 
degree, that ever escaped universal and 
well deserved hanging, and were allowed, 
for some all wise reason to infest the tops of 
the earth. Their present assignment came 
nearer to their proper sphere than any spot 
could be found until after their individual 
deaths. 

Our own men were not, by any means, 
a set of saints, but the very worst rip in our 
command was a white robed angel of. 
heavenly grace, compared with the best 
features from the FEAR-specimen that could have been selected 
ful 14th. among the scum of scum of -creation that 

was gathered into the ranks of the 14th Regulars, and very gladly we 
marched away from the most miserable localitv that ever tormented poor 
soldiers, and left behind us the meat for gallows of our army. 

With only one or two deviations we followed the same route as on our 
outward march when returning to our former headquarters. I had an 
opportunity to learn something of the remarkable dryness of the atmosphere 
and absence of rain which marks that section : after leaving that place I 
missed from my kit a large knife which I had just before purchased ; on 
our return there I hunted about the place where I had last been using it, 




82 

and I discovered it sticking just where I had left it, without a stain of ruat 
or soil upon it, bright as a new dollar. 

When we arrived at Anaheim, twelve miles from Wilmington, the men 
of our regiment began to sell everything for which they could find a pur- 
chaser, their arms, the camp and garrison equipage, anything and every- 
thing that would bring in money was bartered for it and the proceeds 
expended for rum, on which there was a big drunk of two days' duration, 
in which I am happy to say, I in no way participated. 

We readied Wilmington at last, and there embarked for San Fran- 
cisco, and reached that city in time to be mustered out on May 10th, 1866. 

The sum total of my savings, bounty and final big pay reached about 
$400, and I concluded to carry out an idea I had conceived ; to start off to 
and through Oregon Territory on a peddling venture. 

I had heard so much of the " web-foots " that I had an intense desire 
to make a close acquaintance with, and as many dollars as possible off, the 
good natured Oregonians. 

With the firm of Tobias and Davidson I invested over three-f ourths of 
my capital, buying cheap, glittering trinkets and ornaments, with about 
an ounce of gold to a ton of brass, but manufactured, and of a character, to 
find a ready sale among the class of people with whom I was about to come 
in contact, then I bought a ticket for Portland city, and from there started 
out to open my new campaign. 

On my journey to Portland I made the acquaintance of a young doctor, 
Slagimdote, I will here call him ; and the intimacy I contracted with him 
exercised a very considerable influence on my future life, as will be seen 
hereafter. 

The doctor and myself went to board at the same hotel, and as he most 
assiduously cultivated my good opinion, and I had not the least suspicion of, 
nor did he allow me to see his true character, we were soon fast friends ; 
and on my side, at least, the kindly feeling was sincere and entirely disin- 
terested. I had procured a box, specially made for easy carriage, and from 
the trunk containing all my stock, I packed this with an assortment and 
started off up the Willamet Yalley in search of customers and profit. 

My adventures on this trip were all of the most pleasant nature ; the 
valley is a garden spot of the earth, well sprinkled with as pretty, lively, 
healthy daughters of Mother Eve as can be found anywhere. 

Most of the men folks being absent at the mines, it was something of 
an event when there arrived in the midst of these jolly maidens a young 
man who was willing, and whose business it was to flatter them to the top 
of their bent and make himself as agreeable as possible. 

The contents of my box added to my own attractions and fascinations, 
caused a flutter of excitement equal to the advent of a circus in a country 
town, the glittering trinkets dazzled their eyes, and the soft accents of 
Danish-English blarney tickled their ears. 

I could and did court a new girl every night, always of course in a 
perfectly respectful way, the guardian mothers and fear of fathers and big- 
brothers with handy shot guns insuring that; and I lived in clover. I 
could have, and I might have done worse, selected from dozens who were 
ready to enter into life partnership with me, and many times I was forced 
to listen to Mam, when I would have far preferred "buzzing" Sis; while 
the dame advised me that I should marry and settle down, and then pro- 



83 




ceeded to dilate upon the many and manifold accomplishments, virtues and 
housewifely excellences of the bright-eyed daughter. 

They would delicately 
express their confidence in me, 
hint how Sis was "took" 
after me, what a fine, stout 
handsome pair we would make ; 
there was just such a spot 
where, with a store, mill, or 
tavern we could make our 
everlasting fortune, Sis and 
me, and continue in such 
strain until I was all blushes, 
confusion and talk-tired. 

The life I was now lead- 
ing was full of enjoyment for 
me. I was passing through an 
immense and beautiful garden, 
meeting free spoken, bright 
handsome girls and sharpen- 
ing my wits, in which I had 
! l learned to put considerable 
confidence, by friction with 
all kinds of antagonists. That 
I sometimes met with keener 
fascinations. ones I had several proofs. At 

the city of Salem, bartering with the dashing factory lasses, I was several 
times the victim of " put up " jobs, and while one of* the sparkling little 

rogues attracted my attention, 
another would secure some coveted 
article of my stock without troubling 
me to name the price or make change 
in payment. But such matters 
could easily be put down to profit 
and loss account, and the profit side 
could stand it. But this is a digres- 
sion. 

At every farm house or com- 
fortable dwelling I offered and pushed 
my goods with the persistence neces- 
sary to the successful prosecution of 
my trade. The wares a peddler has 
to dispose of are secondary considera- 
tions; cheek, gab and good nature 
are the commodities he requires in 
unlimited quantities, and I added to 
my stock in that line each day of my 
life and experience. 

By the female portion of the 
profit and loss. community my coming was always 




84 



met with a hearty welcome, and the inspection, comparison, gossip and 
purchasing, the latter invariably preceded by long, cunningly conducted 
"jewing down " was a happy event and grand break in the monotony of 
their unvarying routine lives, it being only by rare chance and through 
travellers that they are ever afforded a chance to gain a glimpse of the out- 
side world. 

The men of that region, I regret to state, did not appreciate my mis- 
sionary efforts for the introduction of refined adornments. When I did 
happen to find them at home, there was lacking in then reception of myself 
and pack, that outburst of "come in and sit down, " 
which marked the greeting of the lady inhabitants. 
Masculinity seemed to be more inclined to and 
liberal in offering, orders to vacate and bites from 
the dog than with dollars and dimes. They, the 
men, fully understood that if I once gained hearing 
of their wives and daughters, and could for a 
moment flash my 1 glittering breast-pins, ear-rings 
and bracelets before their eyes, away would go, in 
my pockets, some considerable amount of their hard 
earned cash. 

The elderly and more settled ladies would some- 
times attempt to resist being led in temptation, and 
"wanted nothing in my line to-day;" or warned me 
to "pass on — no time to spare," they would say; but 
a judicious administration of a dose of " taffy " and 
the exhibition of my samples would, in nine cases 
out of ten, result in examination, inclination to pur- 
chase, and finally, sale; 
they had "no use" Good nature breeds good nature, and that 
for ear-rings. " molasses catches more flies than vinegar," is a 
truism that should be a point of cardinal doctrine with every young man 
who wishes to make his way successfully through the world. 

Politeness costs nothing, and generally pays large dividends on small 
investments, is a fact that ought to be noted in the mental memorandum 
of every one. 

But I am writing facts and history, not sermons, and it is time I 
grappled with a new chapter in my life as a peddler. 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE PECULIARITIES AND PHILOSOPHY OF PEDDLING. 

In pursuit of prosperity, in connection with my advocation as a ped- 
dler, I fashioned my manner . and means much on the pattern of that 
amusing old rascal, Autolycus, introduced by Shakespeare in his " Winter's 
Tale." This similarity occurred without intention on my part, or knowl- 
edge' of my distinguished prototype ; but I had quickly discerned that the 
average human would much rather trade with a merry hearted sinner than 
a grim visaged, grum, scanty speeched saint. So I tried always to be in a 
happy humor. 

" Here ! " I would say, " here are ribbons and threads, bright as your 
eyes strong and lasting as your affections; razors and knives, sharp as 
your wits ; buttons, to hold you in ; and head dresses to set you off ; combs 




85 



that will work the ideas of new fixings for you into the heads of your hus- 
bands; brushes that pull out every gray hair from your curls; chains, 
charms and rings that will dazzle all eyes so they can't see your freckles, 
and lockets that will snap in and hold the hearts of your lovers." 

Such was the burden of my song, and by the time I had gotten half 
through it, and given my audience a peep in my box, all the females of the 
family, Mam, Sis and Pussy, were busy, not at their proper and usual 
work, but in overhauling my goods and dickering for such of them as took 
their fancy ; and once started at buying they would see this, that and the 
other article, the want of which they never before felt need of, but now 
were certain they could never be happy without, and the, to me, sweet buy 
and buy would be kept up so long as they had a coin to spend. 

How often in those days I realized the truth of the old adage that " a 
fool and his money are soon parted ;" but as I was not the fool, and the 
money was coming to, not parting from me, I did nothing necessary to 
remind my customers of the ancient proverb. 

Spectacles were probably the most profitable articles in my stock; for 
these there was a large and steady demand, and the manner in which I 
worked off dozen after dozen, I here tell, not to instruct others in deceitful 
practices, but as a warning to the short-sighted and unsophisticated of im- 
paired vision, who require the information to protect them , from further 
imposition. 

The profit on one pair of " specs" would pay expenses for a whole day, 
and I always worked hard to realize that amount from said source. The 
more elderly men and women of that section, almost without exception, 
used, glasses; they were, most of them, never willing to admit that their 
eye sight was failing, or their old pair not of suffi- 
cient magnifying power; it was "the glasses were 
scratched," or "they never had suited," or some 
other fault. 

Most certainly did I join in with their abuse of 
the pair then in possession; another pair more 
powerful would be produced from my box, prop- 
erly lectured over, and "sold again, and got the 
money," would be my joyful but inaudible song. 

Occasionally I would find an individual who 
asserted that he or she was perfectly satisfied and 
admirably suited with the old eye aids, and needed 
or would have no new ones. It was then no part 
of my plan to disparage the ancient stand-bys ; I 
asked to see them, handled them with an air of 
veneration, passed my finger over the surface of the 
glasses (having first inserted the finger in my ear 
and gathered upon it a light coating of waxy secre- 
tion), and so rendered them somewhat blurred or 
,dim. I would then hand them back without a 
word against them; but soon I asked the wearers, 
as a favor and experiment, to try just for a 
A big "spec" in specs. moment, and simply as an illustration of the inven- 
tive and improving genius of the age; a glimpse through a pair of my "new 
patent, back-action, triple-lens, corner-concave, gas magnifying micro- 




so 



scopic multiplying, diamond polished, Cape of Good Hope pebble, Amster- 
dam cut, eye invigorating-, intensifying and regenerating spectacles. " And 
it was ten chances to one that I had the cash for the new pair, and at an 
extra price too, in my pocket within five minutes. 

Then I used to have three or four pairs stowed away down at the 
bottom of my box; these I was " keeping for " some local celebrity of high 
repute, and I never appeared anxious to sell them, in fact I pretended to 
be rather shy of, and sly about exhibiting or having them handled; but as 
a "special favor" to the party then undergoing manipulation, I wquld 
just show them "a pair of particularly fine glasses, extra gem-lens I was 
taking to " the Judge or Minister or some other influential individual. 

Of course these " special specs " were of high perfection and price, so 
I stated, and it was a rarely self-sacrificing or strong minded person who, 
having once tried them on, did not discover their wonderful superiority 
over all others, did not insist upon retaining them, and paying therefor a 
price three times as great as that for which I could have obtained the exact 
duplicates by taking any of those I had with me. 

I will not, even in this truthful chronicle, "give away " what I paid 
wholesale price for this most valuable portion of my trading outfit ; but the 
profit on each pair, even if they brought but two dollars, (and they gener- 
ally sold for much more), was large, very large. 

Great P. T. Barnum is credited with the saying, that "people of this 
country love to be humbugged," and I am prepared to endorse the opinion 
of that wise and successful showman. 

The pair of spectacles for which I received five dollars, the man who 
bought them would have refused to look at had I offered them at two 

dollars or less, saying and thinking that 
at such a low figure they must neces- 
sarily be good for nothing. When I 
sold brass jewelry at fifty cents a set, I 
had hard work to get rid of it ; but 
when I displayed the very same goods 
as extra fine, latest style, quadruple 
gilt, and added two dollars to their 
price, they " went off like hot cakes," 
and every girl who had earned, could 
earn, or borrow, or coax from father, 
mother, brother, husband or lover the 
sum required, was hunting around for 
me to take her money and furnish her 
with the trash. 

Such is life, and the deceitfulness 
of mankind ; especially peddlers. 

In compliance with my rule " to be 
all things to all men," my political 
sentiments and religious convictions 
were invariably stretched or contracted, 
rounded off or smoothed out, to coin- 
cide exactly with those of the party 
with whom I was trading or stopping 
for the time. 




STUCK. 



87' 

More than once I was placed in most embarrassing predicaments in 
attempting to accommodate myself to circumstances, where I fit about as 
compactly as a " round man in a square hole." 

I had a tight squeeze with a Methodist minister, at whose house I 
stopped over night, I had, of course, given him to understand that I was a 
devoted follower of John Wesley, and that evening he asked me to "lead 
in prayer." I attempted to comply with his request, but in very shame 
my tongue refused utterance and my mind to frame ideas. I was "stuck, " 
and finally told him that I only could, and always did offer up my prayers 
in my native Danish — an explanation he seemed to consider decidedly thin. 
He advised me to cultivate fluency in English for devotional purposes as 
carefully and assiduously as I did for transactions in peddling. 

Another time I sadly missed hitting it when, on arriving at a ferry I 
found the " ferryman " was four buxom females. I reached the house on 
the river bank just as they were departing, gorgeously arrayed for some 
quilting or country dance, and congratulated myself upon arriving before 
they left. I entered into conversation with them, thinking that I might 
make sales and defray ferry and other expenses, and in course of general 
chatter I mentioned that I had served in the Union army during the war. 
That settled it, but not in the least to my satisfaction. The four female 

ferryites flamed furiously forth 
at once ; " they were Pike county, 
Missouri women, they were!" 
and rebels of the deepest dye, and 
I was a "bloody Hessian, who 
had sold myself to the Yankees 
and aided in killing their fathers, 
husbands, brothers and lovers.'" 
If I waited for them to take me 
across the river I would most 
likely die of old age on that bank. 
They grew wanner' and warmer 
until words failed to express their 
opinion of me, and action took the 
place of speech. They opened fire 
four jrniiOTTS females. lip0 u me with mud and rocks, and 

I only escaped bodily injury by putting my pack on my head and wading to 
the opposite shore. . & 

But such unpleasant encounters were very few in my Oregon experi- 
ences; travelling through that country is a succession of joys for every 
sense; the soil is most fertile, bringing forth plenteous crops with the least 
expenditure of labor, refreshing rains are frequent, the climate is delightful 
and invigorating, the rivers teem with fish of choice varieties, and the hills 
abound m game. ' 

The Indian inhabitants of that Territory are all well-behaved and on 
reservations, controlled and fed by the government ,1 minted much 
among the red men, for whom my glistening trinkets possessed many 
attractions, and m return for jewelry, knives, beads and knick-knacks gener- 
ally, I obtained many of the valuable furs which they know so well how to 
prepare, on which I realized a profit over which I certainly never 
complained. J 




-v*-- 



88 




CHAPTER XXI. 

DOWN TO THE BOTTOM AGAIN. 

I made three trips through Oregon, constantly increasing my capital 
and popularity. 

Returning to Portland to replenish my travelling box from stock in my 
store trunk, I found that the landlord of the hotel where I always stopped, 
and with whom I had left the trunk, had attached my property as security 
for a debt of $200, due him from my quasi friend Dr. Slagimdote. 

In answer .to my indignant 
demand to know what I, my trunk 
or goods had to do with the debts 
of anybody but myself, he replied 
that I had endorsed or become 
responsible for the account of that 
individual. This I emphatically 
denied,though I acknowledged that, 
when the landlord once asked me, 
" How about the Doctor ?*' I had 
carelessly replied, "Oh, he's all 
right," or words to that effect. 

This admission, in the legal 

=^_. mind of the veritable Dogberry of a 

sr Squire, before whom the case was 

brought for trial, was considered to 

the doctor's hotel bill. hold good as though I had given 

written security for the honesty of Dr. S., and I was accordingly " let in " 

for the amount. 

I had engaged a " shyster " lawyer to conduct the defence on part of 
myself and the doctor, but his services did more harm than good, and I 
was forced to hand him over as a fee, not only all that remained of my 
stock of goods, but also two silver watches whereof I had become possessed. 
I learned later that a desire for revenge had caused the institution of 
this suit, the doctor being the man against whom hatred was directed, for 

not only had he contracted debts 
wherever he could find anyone to 
trust him, but he had also entered 
and indulged in a career of de- 
bauchery which knew no limit, 
including among his victims the 
young wife of the hotel keeper ; 
some of the dti's wobk. the poor woman soon after becom- 

ing insane and dying by her own hand. 

It was to retaliate in some measure upon this grand rascal that the 
prosecution was entered, but I was made the sufferer. All these hidden 
motives did not become known to me until much later, and just then, won 
by his seeming sorrow and deceived by his lying explanations, feeling like- 
wise utterly broken down and adrift in the world, with all my bright pros- 
pects and hopes completely blasted by undeserved punishment, I considered 
him a brother in misfortune and I stuck to him. 

By selling some of my personal property I managed to get money 
enough to take the two of us to San Francisco, having hard work to 





89 

smuggle the doctor on board the steamer without the knowledge of those 
who were gunning for him, but I contrived to give them the slip, and we 
reached a new port safely. 

The medical Jonah who had caused my financial and commercial ship- 
wreck, found in 'Frisco a partner worthy of him, one of the same craft and 
craftiness, and together they opened an office and sought for practice, while 
I served them in every capacity in order to earn enough to keep from 
starving. 

In return for the thirty or forty cents a day which they gave me, while 
I frequented the hotels, depots, landings 
and places of resort in search of steady 
work, whenever I spied an honest miner, 
emigrant or any one else who gave the 
least evidences of suffering from shakes of 
ague, snakes of whisky, or any other sick- 
ness, and with whom I had or made 
acquaintance, I condoled with and advised 
them as a friend the best course to pursue, 
and if possible I would "run him in *' as a 
patient to the medical partners, who were 
SS really excellent physicians. 

If my picked up patient yielded any 
the doctor's drummer, money, I was allowed a dollar or fraction 
thereof for my share, as a commission. 

That this was not a very high-toned course I am fully aware, and I 
was very much ashamed to be thus engaged, but necessity knows no law 
and acknowledges no moral obligations. I might have been at worse work, 
it is true, and I ought to have been at much better. • 

I became more and more disgusted with my miserable and degrading 
manner of life, of gleaning or scraping only starvation gains as a barker for 
the poison mill of Slagimdote & Co. I slowly but surely gained an insight 
into this man's true character and whole course of proceedings. 

My eyes were opened at last, and I could see what an easily blinded 
fool I had been, how he had at the first, when I possessed money, merely 
looked upon me as a poor dupe who could and would act as his banker, and 
now finding me still a willing victim of his wiles, he allowed me to serve as 
his lackey. 

He owed me not only the amount of the hotel bill I had been forced 
to pay, but for money borrowed on many occasions, cash spent for his 
travelling and living expenses and pleasures ; fact is, he drained me by 
every means in his power without conscience or mercy. It was time for 
me to "kick." 

Fully realizing that I could never expect to recover a cent from him, I 
resolved to make a desperate effort to regain at least a portion of my loss 
by appealing to his father, and as a preliminary step to such action I dis- 
solved my connection with the medical institute of Slagimdote & Co. 

I "next hunted up the paternal Slagimdote, likewise an M. D., and 
with all the eloquence that could be excited by outraged feelings, poverty 
and despair, 1 poured out to him the story of my wrongs, detailed the acts 
of which his son had been guilty, avowed my innocence of any participation 
in his ill deeds, my losses through him, and my pressing necessities, 



no 



The consolation, advice, aid and comfort I received from this ancient 
sinner, of whom one might reverse the old adage and say ' ' like son, so 
father," was contained in the abrupt. 

" Served you right ! just right ! Any one but a born fool would have 
seen at a glance that my son was a worthless rascal and common swindler. 
I won't pay a cent for him or give a cent to him, I've done it before but 
I'll never do it again, I'm done with him forever I " 

Under pretence of offering me what compensation he could for the misery 
brought upon me by his son, but really, I believe, because he saw that he 
could get more work out of me for less money than any one else he could 
hire, the elder S. proposed that I come to live with him as a man of all 
work, at thirty dollars per month wages. 

Badly in want of some place to call a home, I engaged with the old 
man and at once entered upon his service. "Man of all work " truly was 
I, cook, errand boy, house servant, stable man, boot black, pill maker, 
potion mixer, milkmaid, chicken tender, companion and slave. 

The senior M. D. was as detest- 
able in his miserly meanness as was 
his son in his dishonesty and de- 
bauchery. The milk from the cows 
he kept, he sold yet begrudged them 
food to enable them to produce the 
fluid, and continually abused me for 
supplying them with fodder sufficient 
for their subsistence. He would 
slagimdote's starvation^ ilve counted every grain thrown out 

to the fowls, and yet he expected the 




SENIOR 



♦poor things to lay eggs. 

The cows gave but little milk 



and I used to supply our customers with 



the unadulterated article, the small share the old man reserved for his own 
use, I watered well when we ran short. I had my meals at the same table 
with him, and every morning he indulged himself with two eggs, while I 
was obliged to ration on bread and barley coffee, which latter he consid- 
ered far more healthy (and cheaper) than the genuine bean. 

I didn't propose to starve thougn, 
and as he swallowed his two eggs and 
pump milk at the table, I absorbed what 
"hen fruit" and "cow juice" I con- 
sidered necessary for my health and 
strength, at the place of their production, 
and thus managed to get even on the 
grub question. 

I stuck it out with this old screw 
for some time, but finally we became in- 
volved in a wordy quarrel over some of 
his petty meanness and I cut loose from 
him. I must do him the justice to say 
that he paid me every penny promised or 
due me, and I never heard of him refus- 
ing to meet any contract he made. But 
he was close, very close. 




GETTING EVEN, 



91 

I hunted up my old kink-haired, dark complexioned, soap boiling friend 
and former boss, and with him found work and " white man " treatment 
which kept me busy at the fat tub until May, 1867, when 1 obtained em- 
ployment as laborer at the Mare Island Navy Yard, and continued there 
for some time. 

Next I shifted my body and talents to Benecia, and exercised both as 
hostler in a livery stable attached to a hotel. Among those four-legged 
Clnistians, the horses, I lived in a fair state of content, earning thirty 
dollar's a month, until the periodical fit of restlessness again seized upon 
me, and being unable to resist the pressure, I announced my intention 
of moving on, or off, an idea that the land-lady of the hotel so violently 
opposed that I had hard work to gain possession of my wages and make my 
escape. 

To Annsdale I moved, and there obtained a job in a cement mill. At 
this I worked steadily until the mill shut down, and then I was forced to 
resume my travels. I drifted back to San Francisco, and for two weeks 
remained in idleness, with the exception of two days, when I labored on 
the water works near Fort Point. 

This kind of business, or want of it, would never do; it was absolutely 
necessary for me to hustle around and earn my grub. I hustled. 



CHAPTEE XXII. 

PICKING UP A LITTLE. 

It was now three years since I had first arrived in California ; I had 
struggled hard to deserve good and fight against ill fortune, toiled faithfully 
for success, but found it not. 

I was worse off, in everything but experience, than when I had entered 
the State. The Coast line had not been a Golden Shore to me , the tides 
in my affairs were many and all led on to fortune of the worst sort. The 
necessity of " hustling " was forced upon me by a stomach clamorous for 
food and a body that sadly required re-clothing. 

Certain that I could be no worse, and any change being for the better, 
calling up what of hope and courage I could, with just about a dollar to 
live on, I started for Sacramento, intending to tramp ; but just then came 
a season of cut rates, opposition, slaughtering tactics and fighting between 
rival railroads, and I was able to buy a ticket for my destination for 
twenty-five cents. " Its an ill wind that blows nobody good^" can truly 
be said of the occasional blizzards that howl between rival transporting 
companies ; though the general public have to make up all losses in the 
long run. 

No more demand existing for my services in Sacramento, I "hoofed 
it " to Cisco, ninety miles further inland, the termination at that time of 
the Central Pacific Eailroad, where much work was doing in the rock 
cutting necessary for the extension of that line. 

At this point I secured work as a laborer, and found myself a stranger 
and novice among men who were professional experts at this kind of toil 
and also highly accomplished masters of the whole art of shirking duty and 
loafing during work hours, when the boss was not about ; they had reduced 
the matter to a perfect science. 

I always believed in doing what I had contracted to perform, so 



92 




ROCK CUTTING:. 



plunged ahead, always anxious to do my level best, and keeping up the 
steady blows of my heavy sledge upon the drill which my mate held and 

directed, whether the overseer was 
within sight or not, much to the 
disgust of my " pard," who with "the 
rest of the gang set me down as a 
big fool in general, and he considered 
me a confounded nuisance to himself 
hi particular. 

I was by no means surprised at 
the character I gained in the estima- 
tion of my companions, for all my 
§ unnecessary toil, as they considered 
" it, but I was certainly highly aston- 
ished at the result of this giving of 
a fair day's labor for a fair day's 
wages. 

The boss of our section, who 
knew his business well, soon noticed 
that work did not proceed during his 
absence, at the same rate and rapid- 
ity which marked its growth while 
he was on the ground, and easily suspecting, or fully aware of the cause 
of such uneven results, he stationed himself at a distance, where, through 

the aid of a powerful field glass, 
he could easily watch operations 
without the gang being aware 
that his eye was upon them. 

Thus he made himself master 
of the whole situation, and as I 
continually busied myself about 
something, even when my "butty" 
would drop his drill and refuse 
to hold it in loafing time ; I was 
focused in the boss' eye as a 
steady, honest worker, while 
others were identified as habitual 
shirkers. I don't say that I 
never, not even for a moment, 
took a small, short loaf, but I did 
A sly old boss. no t oVerdo the matter and was 

lucky enough to escape detection. 

The first intimation I had of the favor gained by my industry, was 
when the boss walked up to and accosted me. 

"Here, young fellow r , you throw down that hammer, and you need 
never take it up again on this work unless it is to show some one else how 
to use it." 

I obeyed his order promptly. He led me over to a dirt cutting 
and installed me as boss over thirty-five Chinamen, and I felt as proud as 
though I had received a commission of Major General. It was an easy 
job I had now, and I bossed my yellow boys in dignified comfort, having no 




93 




AN EASY JOB. 




SNOW SHOEING. 



trouble in getting good work out 
of them, and giving every satis- 
faction to my superiors. But I 
desired, as winter was coming 
on, to find a place where I 
would not be exposed so much 
to the severely inclement weather 
of that section, and after I had 
been overseer in the dirt cut for 
some weeks, I made application 
for work such as I proposed to do, 
and was transferred to the depot 
of the company at Cisco, where 
my bulk of body and strength of back 
stood me in good part as the big. baggage 
bouncer and wrestler with the heavy 
freight generally. 

Winter set in very early that season, 
and was unusually frigid, the snow drifts 
in many places being twenty feet deep ; 
travel was almost entirely suspended and 
I had little and light work to do in the 
freight department of that station. 

But my services were soon brought 

into requisition by my assignment as 

" line man " on the wire extending -over 

the Sierra Nevada Mountains, my duties 

in this counection consisting of general 

supervision of the iron thread, hunting 

out breaks, dragging detached wires from 

the snow and re-uniting them, carrying 

messages and odd jobs of every decription. 

The snow rendered it necessary to wear snow 

shoes, which while differing in style from those 

used in Canada were equally efficacious, and I 

soon learned to "handle my feet;" thus equipped, 

with ease, safety and celerity, and many a mile I 

thus traversed upon the snowy surface over vast 

solitudes. 

This work was very laborious, always 
attended with more or less danger, yet it had in 
it an element of excitement that just suited me, 
and I enjoyed the life immensely. Often my 
escapes were little short of miraculous, and 
many times I came near to losing my life in the 
snow. On one occasion I wandered from my 
path at night and was compelled to employ every 
moment of time in active movement of as mauy 
of my muscles at the same moment as possible, 
dancing, running, jumping, etc., continually, 
for I knew that to remain quiet for even the 



94 



shortest period, meant frozen to death, and these gymnastics I kept up 
until morning light enabled me to ascertain my whereabouts and exert 
my efforts in reaching the station. 

With all this to combat, I would have been perfectly content with my 
life had not the demon of desire for change again entered my brains and 
made me take action which resulted in another change of situation. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

ON THE FRONTIER. 

I had long entertained a great desire to see something of life on the 
frontier, but did not wish to seek experiences in the garb or station of a 
private soldier as one of the regular army. 

I heard that a surveying party was soon to start out, and I bestirred, 
myself to obtain a position therein, and early in the year 1868, I was grati- 
fied by an appointment as "stake marker," with orders to report in person 
at Hunter's Station, now called Reno; from which our detail set out to 
meet and aid another party in laying out preliminary lines for what is now 
the Grand Central Pacific Railroad. Our chief engineer was named 
Cadwallader. 

Beginning at the Sink of the Humbolt 
River, we followed closely up the line of that 
stream, including in our survey the work in 
Twelve Mile Canyon, beyond Carlin, around 
the cliffs of the Pallisaides, on through Five 
Mile Canyon, as wildly beautiful, grand and 
picturesque country as is to be found upon the 
face of the earth. 

Our section was in the advance, the engi- 
neer in charge of it was Mr. Bates, a good, 
easy going gentleman, a thorough master of 
his profession, and very fond of peace at any 
cost; by him, in addition to my stake driving, 
I was placed in the responsible position of 
mule driver, and in this second attempt to 
acquire the mysteries ot that science, I ac- 
quired some proficiency therein. 

The party muster in all, twelve men, two 

on the humbolt. of these being only teamsters. The life was 

all that was enjoyable, being healthy, exciting, varied and" most romantic, 

with just sufficient of danger and risk to cause us to be on the keen lookout 

for human and other enemies. 

We were frequently brought in contact with the Indians of that 
locality, and as we were moving far in advance of civilization and its 
refinements > we interviewed the aborigines in all their native simplicity of 
dress, or rather undress, manners and customs. \ 

Ample opportunities were afforded us to learn and study the cunning, 
cruelty, ignorance, brutality, superstitions and general habits — all very 
filthy ones — of these "noble sons of the forest;" and all our observations 
tended to impress upon our minds the strong belief that they would not, 
under any circumstances, be particularly pleasant additions to a small even- 
ing tea party, or the sacred limits of a home circle. 




95 




TTNTSTECESSARY FACTS. 



The "Noble Indian" is a good deal of a humbug, so far as I can 
judge, and most likely never existed except in the vivid and generous 

imagination of those who wrote of but 
never knew them , the "Dirty Injun " is 
a deplorable, disgusting, unnecessary, exist- 
ing fact. * 
Our party was sufficiently large, anc| 
all so well provided with weapons of 
offense and defence, that the foolishness 
of getting up any fight with us was 
apparent, even to the savage intellects 
with which we were constantly exchanging 
compliments, so no hostile demonstrations 
were made against us, decidedly friendly 
overtures taking the place of bloody out- 
rages, and we took advantage of such dis- 
position for peace and good will, to vary 
our bill of fare by trading flour, bread, 
sugar and coffee with the natives for game 
and fish. 

The country through which we were carrying our survey was by no 
means level and adapted to easy or graceful locomotion, the contrary was 
the bone-breaking actuality. The whole of mother earth's surface out 
there seemed to be broken up in lots of every imaginable size, and care 
taken to set each of these up edgeways, so our daily pilgrimage and the 
prosecution of our work necessitated and consisted mostly in a series of 
climbings up and over rocks, and scramblings down into chasms, and when 
not thus engaged we were fighting, tearing and cutting our way through 
thick underbrush, wading bogs and swamps, or 
fording rivers of all widths and depths. 

A diversion we enjoyed at all times, the 
material being over plentiful, was destruction of 
the principal product of that territory over which 
we were tramping, rattlesnakes ; of rattlesnakes, 
big, little and medium, there was no end, the 
earth, stones, bushes, everything, seemed to 
breed rattlesnakes. 

How many of these horrible reptiles I killed 
I do not know. I kept count in my mind and 
tally by fastening the rattles on my hat (a 
fashion we all much affected) until I was^ired 
of remembering and adding to the numbers, and 
my hat had no space left for further rattle 
ornamentation, as the old song says, u all around 
my hat I wore 'em." 

I escaped all danger from the fangs of the 
" ALL 'round my 'at I snakes, but I had one encounter with the Indians 
wears 'em." which came near being " deadly pizen '* to me. 




96 



CHAPTEK XXIY. 

FRONTIER FIGHTS AND FANCIES. 

My little difficulty with the Indians happened thus : 
We had pitched a new camp about six miles up the Humbolt, to 
which we were about to remove, but as yet had not occupied it, and I was 
sent to guard what property had been taken there.' I was all alone, but 
felt little fear of any attack being made upon me, and if one was com- 
menced I was well provided with means of resistance, having at hand six 
carbines, a Henry repeating rifle, two revolvers, and plenty of ammunition. 
I was good for a moderate sized tribe as long as I was able to take aim 
and draw trigger. 

About dusk of evening I was surprised to see four strange, stalwart, 
well armed Indian bucks come stalking into camp. They looked around, 
examining all arrangements, then perceiving and understanding that I had no 
companions ; their manner grew each minute more insolent and threaten- 
ing, evidently depending upon their superiority in numbers to force or awe 
me into submission. 

They did not ask for, but curtly demanded that I should give them 
food, and I, as was the custom of our party, furnished them with all the 
provender I thought they required at that time. They then insisted that 
I should supply them with provisions to carry away, likewise with powder 
for their rifles. 

In reply to their modest requests, I told them very decidedly that they 
would not get either grub or powder from me, but that they should git up 
and git out of that camp, or they would find powder and ball more plenty 
than they wished. 

My orders to them were well understood, 
and I uttered. them with a very bold and con- 
fident air, assuming a manner that implied 
ability to enforce obedience. So my uninvited 
guests turned about and moved sullenly away, 
going into camp about half a mile distant. 

I kept a very close watch upon them, as 
I had learned and understood sufficient of 
Indian character and methods to feel certain 
that these fellows would, before next morning, 
pay my quarters another visit to get, or try to 
get, by stealth or violence, what they could 
not obtain by begging. 

I knew that if I allowed myself to sleep 
that night, the probabilities were of the 
strongest kind against my ever waking up in 
this world. My religious convictions did not 
assure me that a transfer to the world of 
" git up and git, injun. "spirits would in the least add to my comfort ; 
anyhow, this world was good enough for me to sleep and wake in for some 
time to come, and I concluded that there should be no dead Danish Hans 
in that locality if I could help it, and I made my arrangements accordingly. 
Just so soon as it became sufficiently dark to prevent the keen eyes of 
these dusky thieves from detecting my movements, I carried away from the 
spot where they had seen them, all the supplies which had been placed 




97 

under my care, and secreted the lots as best I could in different places. 

With the fighting goods, the weapons, I stationed myself about fifty 
feet from my former location, and covering my position as well as I could, 
I went "into battery," laid my plans carefully and my tools handy, made 
desperate resolves to keep awake all that night, and to reorganize my 
manner of living in the f uture, said about a dozen prayers of a dozen- 
deacon-power each and waited. 

Waiting under such circumstances, straining eyes to peer through the 
darkness and ear drums to catch the faintest sound, is about as hard work 
on body and brain as a man wants to tackle. It is wearing on the nerves 
to wait in the dark alone for danger that will certainly come, but from 
what direction you know not ; its harder work than fighting, and I had 
more than enough of it that night. 

With every sense at. its utmost tension I watched and waited, I know 
not how long, but it seemed hours, days, months. At last I heard sounds 
of disappointment and rage proceeding from the spot I had left. I knew 
the sources from which those grunts came, and I opened fire all along the 
line. 

I saluted every point of the compass, and all intermediate radiations 
with shots from the sixteen shooter Henry rifle, sent whistling hi all direc- 
tions the bullets from the six carbines, peppered into the surrounding dark- 
ness the balls from both chambers of my revolvers, and then I fell back in 
good order to refit, load up my ordnance stores and get ready for another 
shot salute to all creation, if necessary. 

Then J began to feel good, much of my nervousness I had blown away 
with the powder I exploded ; I was satisfied that the "marauding foe," as 
a romance writer would term them, were fully aware that there was some- 
body hi that immediate vicinity, who was in possession of a varied assort- 
ment' of firearms, and reckless in his consumption of ammunition. 

Soon I felt better than good, I had no more thought of saying my 
prayers, either in petitions for aid or songs of thanksgiving. I heard no 
further sounds of the enemy, but I kept up keen watch, thinking neither of 
sleep or venturing forth until the broadest of broad day light enabled me to 
get full range of all the surrounding country. 

When I returned to the camping ground I found evidences of the 
prowlers' visit, but no killed or wounded, and I had no further visits from 
the redskins, which suited my book exactly ; all I wanted was to be let 
alone. But I am well satisfied that if I had gone to sleep or remained on 
that spot that night, there would have been "cold meat " there the next 
morning, and I would not have been able to eat it. 

With the exception of such little interruptions as that just mentioned, 
I pursued the even tenor of my way with the surveying party, and gradually 
began, by observation and practice, to imbibe a certain knowledge of the 
art, or to have such instinct awakened within me, and I also acquired a 
habit of viewing the landscape over which we were passing with the eye of 
an expert, or one who thought himself to be such. 

I was continually making mental record of choice locations for town 
sites, cities, central depots, manufacturing villages, farms, etc., and this 
was a source of constant pleasure to me as we kept on our route and work 
up the Humbolt River. 



CHAPTER XXY. 

DREAMS AND REALITIES. 

The month of July, 1868, brought our party as far as South Forks, 
twelve miles below the site of the present town of Elko. 

Here my eyes were dazzled by sight of a plateau of land, which 
appeared to me to be a veritable corner lot from the Garden of Eden, 
sliced off and dumped into this spot for my special pleasure and benefit. 

With that promptness of action which becomes, or should do so, second 
nature to every man who roughs it on the frontier, I at once determined 
that on this delectable land I would pitch my tent and make me a habita- 
tion and a home. 

It was not many minutes then, before I had, in full compliance with 
border laws, regulations and customs, driven my stakes and posted notice 
that I had and thereby did, pre-empted, taken up and claimed "all that 
section or parcel of land running 2,640 feet from stake South, to 2,640 feet, 
stake West ; same width to stake beginning," all of which made a quarter 
section of land, and it was mine own. 

Back of my claim there was nothing but range on range of hills, but 
my quarter section was a garden spot, every inch rich, with deep, black, 
fertile soil ; all being the very best of grazing land. 

Let my most excitable reader imagine his wildest dreams of prosperity 
about to be realized, and he will hardly equal the extravagant speculations 
in which I indulged over that land. I could fill page after page'with exact 
descriptions of the architectural peculiarities of the many air castles I 
erected on that earth, the amount of the ever growing wealth that was to 
come rolling in upon me, the droves of cattle and flocks and herds that 
were soon to roam, unnumbered and innumerable upon those hills, that 
formed so noble a background to my new-found paradise, all these thoughts 
filled my wakmg moments and my hours of slumber. 

But the stern demands of every-day life and the unsentimental duties 
connected with stake and mule driving would not permit of my remaining 
in the clouds and visionary bliss, I had to " step down and out." 

I was obliged to buckle to my work and I did so with a feeling of 
satisfaction that every day of surveying labor, the cash therefor and regular ' 
rations for stomach, were much more substantial, and comfortably filling, 
than ►misty loiterings in dream-land and a diet of wind puddings. So I 
continued with the party all summer, a rather protracted stretch of easy 
sailing for me. 

But the inevitable row and change were coming. 

When we had reached the neighborhood of Promontory the cook of our 
party made up his mind to depart. He so did. Mr. Bates had discovered 
that the culinary art was comprised among my many accomplishments and 
he urged me to take upon myself the honors of the pots and pans, and to 
oblige him I consented. 

The inevitable war and curses that are accompaniments of the broils, 
stews and messes of every camp and ship cook's life, soon commenced and 
involved me in broils, stews and messes, that finally boiled over and landed 
me out of the cook-tent, out of the camp, and out of a job. 

There was one of the party who looked with the green eyes of jaun- 
diced jealousy upon what he considered my undeserved promotion to the 
# Kitchen Cabinet, for the reason that he desired the position himself. 



From the day of my inauguration he commenced and persisted in find- 
ing fault with every dish of food, and to his dissatisfaction he gave free and 
vigorous expression in language which was not only calculated to wound 
my pride as an artist, but was highly offensive to me individually. 

He asserted that I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about cooking, 
that I wasted and rendered uneatable the provisions. With profanity and 
untruthfulness he stigmatized me as a "Beastly, dirty Dutchman! " 

I had lost in a great measure, that indifference to verbal and physical 
abuse, which in my former life seemed to be born of patience, fear or sloth ; 
and this miscalling of my nationalitv and averment of my unclean! iness, 
roused the Danish fighting blood within me and I "went for" the libelous 
liar all I knew how. . . - 

The fight was a good, clear, knock down and drag out, and two friends 
of my opponent, seeing that he had undertaken a larger contract than 

he could fill in "getting away 
with me," generously mixed in, 
but by gathering up and exer- 
cising all my strength, and a 
pick handle, completely routed 
the combined forces of the ene- 
my and drove them off the field. 
They retired in not very 
good order or humor, held a 
council of war, and then re- 
newed the battle, with artillery, 
in the shape of their pistols, 
well in front. 

My shooting irons were not 
within reach. I retreated for 
change of base ; I don't say that 
I ran away, but I walked very 
fast in the opposite direction 
from the wrathful men who 
were pointing pistols, loaded and 
cocked, with awfully careless 
fingers on triggers ; in direction 
of my brain pan 

' I did not return to camp for 

some hours after retiring from the combat, and when I got back and 
hunted up my weapons, I f ound that these fellows had, in a spirit of wanton 
vindictiveness, taken my much prized Henry rifle, extracted from it all the 
cartridges, and destroyed my entire stock of ammunition. I had cooled 
down considerably before I discovered this mean trick, and the outrage 
was a fresh casus belli. The battle commenced anew and raged furiously; 
this time, however, hostilities were confined to language, and in it the chief 
of our party, Mr. Bates, took a share. 

Our leader soon discovered that peace was neither to be patched up or 
preserved between my antagonists and myself and he was-forced to allow 
policy to get the better of justice, as the question was whether he should 
lose one man or three, at a time when he could illy spare any from his gang. 
There was no other solution to the matter, no other course open to him, 




100 




1 must go ; to send the three friends off at that stage of the work would 
have crippled him too severely to be thought of and been a violation of his 
duty to the company. 

He told me, regretfully, that I was to con- 
sider myself "bounced;" paid me in full for six 
months' service, at forty dollars a month ; gave 
me one hundred rounds of cartridges for my 
Henry rifle (all he could spare from his own 
stock of ammunition) ; his blessings and good 
wishes; and I went. 

Loaded like a pack-mule, with my trusty 
weapon, blankets, clothing, cooking utensils, six 
days' rations, a sense of ill treatment and the 
curses and jeers of my enemies, I turned my back 
upon the surveying party and business, and 
struck out on the trail to retrace my steps to 
South Fork and my "Land of Goshen." 

How I did hoof it over ground to my beauty 
spot! 

I was burning with im- 
patience to satisfy myself by 
eye evidence that it was really 
there, and that the whole 
matter was not a creation of 
imagination, and highly de- 
lighted was I when I once 
more stood upon "my land." 
At once I proceeded to 
build a hut that would serve 
me as winter quarters, and 
then I settled down to try the 
life of a hermit; and it proved 
the most "trying" life of all 
the many varieties in which I 
had ever been thrown or vol- 
AS A hermit. untarily placed myself. 

As a hermit, I was not a happy success. 



OFF FOR THE LAND OF 
GOSHEN. 




101 
CHAPTER XXYI. 

TRYING A TURN AS TEAMSTER. 

My life, after I entered into possession of, and residence upon my 
property was about as lively as it would have been in a quaker burying- 
ground on a dark night in December. 

The beasts of the field and buds of the air were the only companions 
I had for most of the time ; the few human beings that crossed my path 
were the teamsters who passed by, and from these 1 obtained a little news 
and whatsoever of provisions I required. 

The Robinson Crusoe trade of "living all alone by yourself " and 
being u monarch of all I survey " was very comfortable, lazy, and luxurious 
existence for a time, nothing to do but to cook, sleep and eat. 

But I had always been an animal of social, though quiet, disposition, 
and the charms of solitude began to pall upon me as the monotony of my 
life each day increased. I tried to reconcile myself to steadv continuance 
in the hermit line; but, like Paddy who "got blue mouldy fur want uv a 
batin'," I soon began to long for the changeful life and stirring scenes to 
which I had been accustomed, and I cast about for w T ays and methods to 
satisfy my desire. 

Prudence and frugality of expenditure and living in the past months 
of steady employment had once more placed me in possession of, to me con- 
siderable, available capital, and I decided to invest a portion of my funds 
in an outfit for active business. 

The transportation trade seemed to be doing thrivingly in that section 
and with a view to entering into it I purchased two horses and a wagon, 
the outlay for these walking into my "pile" to the tune of $350. 

But I was so fortunate as to find quick and steady demand for my ser- 
vices and was kept busy in carrying freight from the completed end of the 
railroad to the advanced Camp of Construction ; supplies needed by the 
gangs who were preparing the road bed for the track layers. 

Hauling heavy loads over those unbroken, new roads, was no easy 
work on man, horses or wagon ; my vexations and mishaps, delays, tilt 
ups, break downs, and turn overs, were very numerous. 

One day I was freighted with three heavy boxes, weighing over six 
hundred pounds each, a very stiff load for that country; and was crossing, 
or trying to cross, over a flat, when the wheels became mired up to the 
hubs and it was impossible for the horses to budge the wagon. 

I coaxed, and pulled, and whipped, and jerked, and exhorted the ani- 
mals to the extent of my ability, strength and language, but without effect. 




A STICK IN THE MUD. 



102 



The team could not do the work, and I was resting iny tired bones and 
tongue when along came a six-mule team. 

To the captain of this land schooner I made known my unfortunate fix; 
in fact he spied and enjoyed it, and to him I applied for assistance. 

But prayers, abuse, or promises to pay would not move the hard heart 
of this prairie pirate to pity and lending oi' a helping hand or mule. With 
unnecessary and profuse profanity, he informed me that such small, two- 
horse concerns as mine had no business to try hauling on that road, taking- 
business from the regularly equipped and thoroughly efficient six-mule team 
monopolies. 

He said I was now in my proper place, my team also ; being but a 
" stick in the mud " of a freighter, and he considered it due to personal 
pride, professional honor, and the interests of his employers, to leave me 
where he found me and where I belonged. He left me. 

In gay disdain, and gleeful contempt he departed, sarcastically hurling 
at me the advice and philosophy of his class, as expressed in the obscene dog- 
gerel, "If you want to get rich, etc., you must paddle your own canoe." 
This addition of insult to injury aroused my angry passions to a most 
fervent heat, and for a few moments I was tempted to have recourse to 
"border law," to follow the inhuman brute up and with a pistol shot let a 
little sunlight into his dark interior. But a few moments of reflection 
turned the current of my thoughts and saved me from a murderous act. 

Arousing myself once more to exertion, I unharnessed and picketed 
my horses away from the mire, I fed the poor, tired animals, and then, 
taking a rope, chain and axe, I walked three miles to the mountains and 
growing timber and cut two long poles with which, by using them as 
levers, I hoped to raise my wagon from its miry bed. 

These poles I lugged and dragged back, paddling my own canoe, over 

the long, rough road, and 
with this aid I managed 
to roll the heavy boxes oft 
into the grass, and then 
to pry out the wagon next 
by the hardest of strain- 
ing, I replaced my bulky 
load and proceeded on my 
way to Elko in a nmch 
happier frame of mind and 
far better satisfied with 
myself and the world. 

As I tramped along 
and turned my latest exper- 
ience over, I argued myself 
into belief that the rough, 
but not ready, uncharita- 
ble, and disobliging six 
mule team aristocrat had 
paddling my own canoe. really conferred upon me, 

without intending so to do, valuable advice and instruction, when he left 
me to get out a bad case of stuck- in-the-mud, solely by my own wits and 
exertions. 




103 

The parting injunction to "paddle your own canoe," 1 have ever since 
remembered $ acting upon it also as a sound working principle, and in 
most matters of business, where I have relied and acted upon this philoso- 
phy, I have been successful. 

I had an occasional glimpse of original or aboriginal life during my 
first stay at South Fork Farm, through occasional visitors, who, though 
their comings were "few and far between," had nothing angelic about 
them. They were Indians. 

The subject-matter of their first call was to inform me that "this 
Injun water, Injun land, Injun game," in fact, it was, according to them, 
" all Injun," and " no white man need apply." 

The spokesman of the party grunted out the invitation to leave in the 
English he had picked up from the miners with an air of menace that told 
more plainly than his words, that if I didn't go willingly I'd be made to go 
by force. 

I had, however, lived too long in the woods to be scared by owls or 
Injuns either, and had also learned that Brag was often a good helping 
dog to Holdfast, and so I set the first named to barking. 

Mr. Bedman was notified that I was " Big Chief," with many soldiers 
at my call from Camp Halleck, which was about forty miles over the 
hills, and that I intended to stay. My Henry repeater was something new 
in the way of fire-arms to them ; I told them it was a devil-gun, and put- 
ting my hat at about fifty paces distant, I fired eleven balls through the 
crown more quickly than they could count the shots, and then intimated 
that I could keep ftn popping away all day without re-loading. 

t The exhibition of tins wonderful gun, my cheek and oratory, changed 
their style somewhat, and when I gave them some of my provisions they 
became rather friendly. » 

Some of them had seen me with the surveying party, and heard me 
called "Dutchman," and by that name I was known to them. 

At each visit we came to a better understanding, and accident enabled 
me to acquire very considerable influence over them. 

Two of the party came tome one day and told me that a party of 
cavalry men had tJtken their guns. I had pen, ink, and paper, and 1 4t 
once wrote to the commanding officer, acquainting him with the facts, 
telling him that these were good Indians, and asking him to see justice 
done. 

With "the paper that talks " the bucks made their way to the party 
that had disarmed them and had their property restored, in addition re- 
ceiving two old guns, two ancient blankets, and a lot of maggotty bacon. 
They came back to me delighted ; I crowed immensely, asserting that I 
was the big chief who had done it all, and they fully believed me. Game 
of all kinds was shared with me whenever they had it, and I was not mean 
about giving what I could spare out of my own supplies. 

Another matter that added to my importance was the breaking out 
among them of the small-pox. They w r ere entirely ignorant of any rem- 
edy; I had previously dane a little doctoring among them, and, as a wise, 
big chief, they came to me for advice and assistance. 

I went to Elko, and obtained information and medicine from the doc- 
tor there, then went back to their camp, my clothing deluged with carbolic 
acid, smelling " loud " enough to disinfect the entire territory, and by the 



104 

use of the remedies I brought, and common-sense care I ordered, nearly all 
recovered, and I had the highest of Indian honors as Big Medicine Man. 

Erom that time there was nothing they would not do for me. I could 
leave my cabin unlocked, my provisions on the table, everything dear to 
the Indian heart wituin reach of them, and they neither touched or tasted 
without invitation or permission. 

Any one acquainted with the Indian character will understand how 
strong was my influence with them when I say that on one occasion I ac- 
cused the young son of a chief of stealing my lariat rope, and gave him a 
thrashing. This would have been a killing matter for most men, but the 
old chief and others hunted around for means to convince me that I was in 
the wrong, and they did so. 

They came to me and bade me follow the trail left by the lariat, and 
plainly showed me how it had been dragged off by a prowling coyote, and 
led me to its den, where I found the rope. Then I felt like kicking my- 
self, and with apologies and liberal expenditure of my store, I made the 
matter right so far as they were concerned, but I always felt "cheap" 
over it. 

I did considerable trapping with these new friends, and they gave me 
the beaver and other skins, satisfying themselves with, the meat, which 
they greatly relished, though it was too oily for my taste, and I only eat of 
it when out of other provision; under the same circumstances I ate musk- 
rats. 

Another change in my diet was, when I had gone into the mountains 
with them to attend an Indian fandango. We welfe caught in a heavy 
snow storm, and run out of grub; then we had to turn in on the reserve 
these people, keep to stave off starvation ; it is a bread or cake made of dried 
and powdered grasshoppers and grass seed. It is very good eating, if you 
have nothing else, and are very, very hungry. 

These incidents I mention at this stage of my life as being associated 
with my first land proprietorship, and after this rather extended parenthe- 
sis, now resume the thread of my story. 

The last misfortune with my team and many previous mishaps which 
rendered profit uncertain and heavy expenses sure, tended to discourage me 
in trying to gain wealth by hauling freight with a two-horse team, and the 
clay after my arrival at Elko I disposed of all my right, title, stock, good- 
will and fixtures as included in and represented by my transportation outfit, 
coming through the transaction without loss. 

Then I went back home, locked up the shanty with a wooden plug, 
bade farewell, for a time only, as I supposed, to my "lodge in the wilder- 
ness," and started out for other scenes and occupation. 




105 




CHAPTER XXVII. 

SPECULATIONS, STRUGGLES AND SCANT SUCCESS. 

When I turned my back upon what I now called " home," and could 
refer to as "my property," I made my way on foot to Carlin. 

There I found no opening for investment of capital, and, being offered 

the job, I engaged as workman in the con- 
struction force of the Central Pacific Rail- 
road. 

For two weeks I was employed in the 
laborious work of raising telegraph poles, 
and fitting them up, being very often and 
very literally well up in the world; then, 
with my usual propensity for getting 
"thick" with some stranger, I formed a 
new connection. 

Forgetful of my past, dearly paid for 
lessons, I chummed in with a young man 
named George Barring, who, like myself, 
had a few hundred dollars of spare cash, 
which he was anxious to increase into 
thousands by the most easy and rapid 
means that could be devised. 

My new friend proposed that we should 
enter into partnership, and start a wood 
camp or depot; chop and cord the timber 
which stood ready, close at hand, and sell it to the railroad company. 

His glowing representations as to the amount of business waiting for 

us to gather it in, the 
profits to be gained in 
the trade, the "millions 
in it" that he insisted 
we were losing, soon 
made me as enthusias- 
tic over the project as 
himself. 

We pitched in, 
bought axes, engaged 
a force of choppers, and 
set to work with a will 
that mowed and rattled 
down the timber like a 
hurricane ; but my part- 
ner lacked "staying 
qualities," and when 
we had cut and stack- 
ed about two hundred 
cords, and were ready 
rattling the timber. for a rush of business, 

he began to grow discouraged, and to take a gloomy view of our prospects. 
I wanted to be tied to no croakers or unwilling workers, and there was 



up in the world. 




106 

nothing left for me, under the circumstances, but to make a "give or take" 
offer, " buy in or sell out" was the time of day then. He sold out. 

By the purchase of Barring's interest I had all the wood trade on my 
hands I could manage. I gave him the full value of his investment at 
once, except $160, which 1 afterwards paid, and held his receipfrin full 
for all claims. 

The buying in witli him, and the buying of him out completely ex- 
hausted my ready cash, and I was like the wheels of the wagon, out of 
which I had made some of my capital— up to the hub in the mire of pov- 
erty, a heavy load forcing me deeper down, and no aid likely to be given 
me. 

I had a big lot of wood on hand, or rattier, on the ground of my camp, 
but I had no team to haul it to a market, or money to purchase animals. 

My former resolution, that, when I again found myself beset by a sea 
of troubles, I would, instead of sitting down and crying, grip hold and try 
to paddle my own canoe, now came back on me to urge me to action, and 
studying to think of a place where I could go and earn money to buy a 
team I concluded that I was likely to do best at Elko. 

Back to that Station I made my way, and through the kind influences 
of Mr. James F., now or lately Station Agent at Ogden, Utah Territory, 
I obtained a situation as Police and Watchman, in which capacity I served 
until, after six months of such employ, close economy, and scant living, I 
had saved, from my pay of three dollars per day, the sum of $300. Then 
I was off again. 

"Now," thought I, " get back to the wood camp, purchase a team, 
go to selling wood, 'like sixty,' and make money hand over fist, that's 
your game, old man ! " 

But when I reached the scene of my cutting, I found that certain dis- 
honest persons had drawn upon my stacks until they had taken over one 
hundred cords, and further, that they had become so accustomed to con- 
sider this cut and piled timber as having been thus accumulated for their 
special aid, comfort, and benefit T to be taken by them, free gratis, and for 
nothing, whenever occasion required, that they were very indignant and 
prepared to forcibly resist any presumptuous attempt upon my part to 
repossess myself of my wood or demand payment for what they had used. 

To make any move towards assuming proprietorship of those piles of 
wood was equivalent to a declaration of war between one man and all the 
thieving portion of that community, and that class had the best of me " by 
a large majority." 

The only redress or revenge I could then obtain, in that country and 
day, was to shoot the parties when I caught them stealing my wood, and 
on two occasions I did detect them. 

But I argued : first, that they might shoot as well and quick, or better 
and quicker than I could, and a bullet in my body was a poor substitute 
for cash in my pocket, or wood in the yard ; second, if I did kill one of the 
robbers, it would be "just my luck " to be sent the same road by some of 
his friends, or, .escaping this, to be gobbled and hung or shut up in the 
penitentiary for a term of years of my lifetime, and I could not see that a 
coffin and grave, or board and lodgings, even if furnished without charge, 
would make me square in my timber transactions. 

So I held my fire and my tongue, put the wood speculation down on 



107 

the well filled profit and loss page of my books, sold what of the wood I 
could, and left the purchasers to run the risk of getting it, and retired from 
that decidedly unprofitable business. 

CHAPTEB XXVIII. 

MONEY, MOTHER, AND MATRIMONY. 

My little hut at the foot of the hills, "my property,"—' 1 South Fork 
Farm,"— had still as strong a hold as ever upon my heart. ■ 

In my present condition, without occupation and rather disgusted 
with speculation, my thoughts turned more than ever towards the one spot 
on earth that I could call "home," and it seemed to me that, for once, 
interest and inclination both united in directing me to a wise course of 
proceeding, by prompting my desire to return to the Eden, towards which 
my feet were aching to point then: toes. 

I had a good, strong, stand-by friend, a merchant in Elko; to him I 
went and unburdened my mind, telling him of my doubts, fears, ambitions, 
hopes and desires. 

This kindly merchant not only agreed with me as to the wisdom of 
settling down to cultivation of my landed estate, but he also offered most 
substantial proofs of his friendship and confidence in my. honesty, as well 
as the success of my undertaking, by volunteering to provide me with 
horses, implements, seeds — anything and everything necessary to properly 
fit my farm out in thorough working order. 

I had still some money that had escaped sacrifice in my mania for 
speculation, and this also aided me in my first attempt as a farmer. 

There was still another influence which served to intensify my desire 
to settle down in life. 

My good old mother, who haa toiled so hard for me, and whom, my 
heart told me, I had but illy repaid, had written to me that she desired to 
come to the United States and live with me. It would have been hard for 
even her active spirit to have contented itself by " living with me" in the 
life I had been leading prior to this time, but now I saw my way clear to 
offer her the shelter of my own roof, and I was impatient to have her with 
me. 

"When, therefore, my return to and proper settlement at South Fork 
Farm was fully arranged for, I sent her word to join me as quickly as pos- 
sible. 

Thinking that I could obtain a double allowance of comfort by one 
stroke of work, I instructed her to look about, aud with a mother's jealous 
scrutiny, find, select and bring with her a good-looking, hard-working, 
fair-tempered, honest Danish girl, who was used to farm work, to act as 
housekeeper, with "a view to matrimony," as the "personal" advertise- 
ments of the newspapers put it. 

And then I hastened to the farm and busied myself with preparations, 
and time rolled on, as it always has and will, and the Spring of 1870 ar- 
rived, and with the 'birds and tree buds came the good and most welcome 
mother, and likewise the prize, picked damsel from Denmark, who looked 
good enough outside, and was warranted to possess all the old-fashioned, 
sterling virtues as well as "all the modern improvements"— a perfect 
Daisy to blossom and beautify the entire farm. 



108 



Then I felt as though I was really and truly a regular granger, a pro- 
ducer in the land. Cosy and contented under my own 
vine and fig-tree, with two men to v aid me in my agri- 
cultural pursuits, the mother and prospective wife 
keeping all things in apple-pie order in my house. What 
more could heart desire? "In sweet content, my days 
are spent," was the song of exceeding gladness I sung 
in my foolish heart. 

I have mentioned, early in this history, that my 
mother was a woman of most stirring, go-ahead tem- 
per anient; a Danish- Yankee, or Yankeeish-Dane. 
When, therefore, she had put my house to rights, 
combed my wool right smartly to get some of the vag- 
abond kinks and ideas out of it that occasionally crop- 
) ped up, and bossed everybody into proper running or- 
der, the life in that secluded spot became too monoto- 
though she tried to content herself for my sake, she was 
unhappy, and after a little while 
she accepted an excellent situation 
as housekeeper in the stirring town 
of Elko. 




k WITH A VIEW 
MATRIMONY." 

nous for her, and. 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

A SQUARE KNOCK DOWN. 

The marriage of my Danish 
importation and self had been of- 
ten discussed, in all its bearings, 
" between the interested parties in 
their leisure moments. 

Prudence and forethought en- 
tered very largely into our confabs 
and calculations, and it was decid- 
ed that, before we entered into such 
fc iN sweet content my days are a serious and lasting partnership, 
spent!" my worldly success should be in- 

sured; so the wedding was postponed until the Fall of the year, when the 
crops had been gathered and sold. 

Such was the arrangement when my mother left me to go and live at 
Elko, and the good woman departed content, confident that she had made 
my calling and election sure. 

How true it is tl:at the disposition of events in this world is hardly 
ever in accordance with the propositions and inclinations of the men 
and women inhabiting the earth. The eventuation of my calcula- 
tions at this time only go to prove the soundness of the old Dutchman's 
proverbial philosophy: 

"You purtty surely, most somedimes allvays, shrist can't tell, certain 
furbosidiv, shust noddings aboud effry dings." 
And just so, — you can't ! 

I was going to raise that crop and sell it, I was going to marry that 
girl — and with her as my wife, the bright perspective glowed with a long 



109 



stretch of peace, plenty and continual happiness. I did not raise that 
crop, consequently I did not sell it. 1 did i^k many that girl, and, 
consequently, with her as my wife, hand and Land together, we did not 
journey through life along that pathway iiamied by tue aforesaid electric 
light of earthly joy. ^Sot any. 

All of which happened in this wise : $ 

It was on the night of August 8th, lfSTO, that there came to South 
Fork Farm and its vicinity, entirely uninvited and unwelcome, a bitter, 
black frost, and it nipped and bit and froze, ai.d in a few dark hours ren- 
dered unfit for anything, but turning back into t..e ground every potato 
and vegetable I had planted there. 

The sight that greeted me when I went out in the morning, told me 
in a moment the whole story of dire disaster, it was enough to have brought 
tears into the eyes of the potatoes if the frost had not previously killed 
them ; it certainly brought the brhie into my own, and my heart into my 
mouth. 

I w T as ruined. 

In despair I hurried back into the house and told Maty of the terrible 
blight which had fallen upon and blasted all our plans, prospects, and po- 
tatoes. 

Together and in silence we went out to gaze upon the wreck of all our 
labor, to look upon the scene of desolation. TVo heart-broken, forlorn, 
destitute, overgrown Babes in the Woods, with not even the consoling 
robins to chirp to and cheer us. 

Our misery was too great to find utterance in words, I went into the 
eye water pumping at once, turning on the full tap ; I sat down and "en- 
joyed a good cry." Looking up after a time I saw that Mary was also 
sobbing and weeping as though her heart would break. 

The sight of the poor girl's grief aroused my manhood and made me 
ashamed of my selfish forgetfulness of her. 
I tried to console her with words'; 

" Don't cry over this, my dear," I said, " cheer up and we'll fight it 
through like men; you and me together, and the Lord will help us in his 

own way and at his own good time." 

My attempt at consolation, my moral re- 
flections, condescending acquiescence in and 
submission to higher power (when I had no 
other option) ; my tender tones, and regret at 
her having to share my misfortunes, did not 
pan out a cents worth of paying return. 

What was it her clear duty to do under 
such circumstances ? 

Plainly to tumble into my arms and rub 
her nose against my shirt bosom ; to gush out 
in spasmodic jerks, that she "loved me all 
the more dearly for the misfortunes that had 
/ come upon me ; " — that she would " prefer me 
in my poverty to the Crown Prince of Den- 
mark, or the eldest son of the President,"— 
that she would L -toil and slave for me," 
" would die without me," etc., etc. 




IDEALITY. 



110 




That was the proper and perfectly legitimate stage business for that 
part of the drama. 

Did she do tiiis V Not much, she didn't. 

Oh no ! My Danish Dove wasn't the least wl on the gush " so far as I 
was concerned; she required ail her time and attention just then to gush on 
her own 'account. 

Through all her tears and blubberings, which I was tenderly trying to 
quench and quiet, she •• let me have it." 

Ci Sue wasn't crying over my confounded blasted hopes and my misera- 
ble, dirty, frost bitten potatoes," she 
told me; lt it wasn't over her own 
blasted prospects, and the frost bitten 
flowers of her love, for which she had 
shed those tears. ' > 

And she howled louder than ever 
for a time and then, as if I wasn't 
stunned enough already, she "hit me 
agin." 

"She could have married a poor 

man in Denmark, a man whom she 

always had and always would love ; 

who was a better and smarter and 

handsomer man that I ever dared to 

reality. be ; and she had come over here to 

marry me and be rich ; and now I was poor, and she didn't love me a 

cents worth, and never could and never did and never w 7 ould." 

And then she collected all her capacity for howl, and lifted up her 
voice, and let it out in a manner that it would discourage a fog horn to 
rival. 

I wanted to go somewhere, get into a hole, pull the hole in after me, 
and thus find an early, peaceful death. 

I was worse frost nipped than all the potatoes in and within ten miles 
around South Fork. ( 

In the course of a considerably checkered career, I had received many 
hard blows, regular knock downs ; but this was a stiffner, a perfect parali- 
zation ; this trip-hammer tap that was fired into me by my warranted per- 
fectly reliable, non-shying, never baulking, imported Danish Filly. 

This kicking over of all my matrimonial fat which had been so long 
simmering, into the hot fire of sudden destruction, drove the loss of crops, 
prospects, hopes, and all such small matters, clear out of my mind, switched 
off my train of thought on to another track, and drove it in an entirely 
different direction. 

I am happy to say that I rose equal to the situation. I did not whistle 
"What shall the harvest be," because I did not then know the dulcet 
strains of that melody, and I would not have whistled it if I had been ac- 
quainted with every note of its tooting ; it was unnecessary for me to in- 
quire what the harvest was going to be, so far as I was concerned, either 
in the field agricultural or field matrimonial ; I could guess that harvest 
conundrum, my share of it, first pop, and answer " Nix ! " 



Ill 

I think the most unsympathetic of my readers will admit that " things 
looked blue " for me at this stage of my life's game. 

Blue ! they were black ! black as a lump of coal in a dark mine at 
midnight. I did not think of the old saying that, "when things are at 
the worst, they must mend," but though "plunged in the depths of deep 
despair," and howling in a most perfectly natural, unrestrained and justi- 
fiable manner, there was an under current of just such philosophy beneath 
the torrent of thoughts and feelings that swept over my mind and heart. 
"Almost twelve years to a day, it is," I exclaimed, as I stood there 
alone, concemplating the dire ruin about me, "since I first came to 
America ; I have fought fire, struggled through water, endured poverty, 
abuse, treachery of those I considered friends, suffered sickness, pain, star- 
vation, and undeserved stripes, and now the very elements have conspired 
to crush me ! " 

" There are none left to comfort me in this crowning misery. My 
mother is not here to console, my promised wife has deceived and deserted 
me, my last coin must go to pay my men ; all that remains to me will not 
pay quarter of my debts ; 1 am a Jonah to good luck. 

"Nobody will trust me again for a penny; of food I have not sufficient 
to live for a week; there is nothing between me and starvation but frost- 
bitten and blackened potato tops and nubbins." 

"Mother gone! Mary gone! crops gone! friends and credit gone ! 
hope gone ! wits almost gone 1 empty pockets! empty belly ! bare back!" 
Boys, it was a very cold day. 

The undefined feeling that things could not, by any possibility get 
worse, and a certain amount of the "paddle your own canoe" doctrine 
that still stuck to me, alone kept me from thoughts of making a third 
attempt to end my existence. 

"Twelve years of bad, bad luck," I said to myself, "it canH last, it 
can't be possible that I am going to suffer such evils for another twelve 
years, and at the end of that time be in such another fix as this I" 
"I'm going to see it out ! " 

So I just gulped down my sighs, shut my eyes on my sorrows, dried 
my tears, braced up and* faced the music. 

I called to the girl who was near by, standing, sulky and ugly. 
"Mary," I said to her, "I never tempted you, knowingly, to leave 
your home and the man you loved. I told my people to tell you all about 
me before you came over, and since then have given you plenty of chance 
to learn all about me and my 
every day life. I have tried 
faithfully to think of no other 
girl but you, and to like you 
and be true to you in every 
way. Yet all this time you 
have been carrying deceit hi 
your heart against me. I am 
more sorry for you than I am 
for myself." 

And in all that I said to 
her I spoke the truth. 
disgust. In all she did she showed pack off. 





112 

her disgust so plainly that I became angry and told her to "pack off." 
I write about this serious portion and episode in my life, with 

an affectation of now looking only on the comical side of the affair. 

I do this because it is far better to so do than indulge in the pathetic 

or tragic over misfortunes that can't be helped, and woes that are past 

and gone. 

But it was a very stiff dose for me just then. Indeed, it was. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

" NEVER SAY DIE, BOYS ! " 

Of course my Mary, who was'nt my Mary, could no longer stay at the 
farm under oar present agreement to disagree. I had ordered her to leave 
but could not thrust her out without a home, so, with some little trouble, I 
obtained a place for her at Elko, where she could earn $30 per month. 

Though I had little serious care in the girl's future, thinking that she 
was calculating enough to look out for herself, I had a certain amount of 
interest in the money she made. 

Of her own free will she had come from Denmark, with funds fur- 
nished by me, under the contract that she should make me a good, true 
wife ; the impossibility of her doing this under any circumstances she had 
herself made very plain. 

Hard pushed as I now w T as for cash, I did not propose to be the only 
loser in the whole transaction ; the shock to my self-conceit and vanity 
was beyond remedy or repair, but the financial injury might be very con- 
siderably lessened. Sixty dollars, applied in small lots, to my pocket, is 
the amount of salve that helped to cure that smarting sore. 

The loss of the girl I got quickly over when once I was able to see her 
with unglamored eyes. She was not true even to the "poor man whom 
she had always loved in the old country ; " never went or tried to go back 
to him, though she could easily have done so. She married a stock raiser, 
but did not turn out well, as she proved to be lacking in those qualities of 
truth that lead to honest dealing in all conditions of life. ' Let her R.I. P. 

After settling my love affairs, which were not love affairs at all, being 
foolishness on my part and a swindle on that of the girl, I sought out 
again my merchant friend at Elko, and to him told my u plain, unvarnished 
tale," with a full statement of my position and prospects, or rather my 
lack of the latter. 

The jolly dealer condoled with and laup;hed at me, cheered me up 
wonderfully with his kind, pleasant, hopeful advice and way of looking on 
the bright side of things. 

"Never say die, boy! Get up and go at it 
again! " 

That is what he bade me do, to take courage 
and go to work, not to worry about my debts, that 
I could pay him when and how I could, and that 
he felt I could and would square all up with him 
and come out ahead some day. 

This was timely, sensible advice and comfort, 
-sf^^r an( j j ac ted upon it. 
MY elko friend. Going out to the farm I gathered up all I 




113 




HAULING OUT OF DEBT. 



could, salvage from the v wreck, and with, my team I hauled wood and sold 
it to whoever wanted to buy. 

A neighbor had very considera- 
ble - confidence in my ability to get 
out of scrapes, and he loaned me 
, $200, taking my farm as security. 
The money borrowed from 
neighbor John, I paid to my kind 
helping friend in Elko, and what 
1 niaue in selling wood 1 used to 
pay up other debts ; then I trans- 
^ ferred my team to my mother for 
lH=b employment under her direction 
^^ and abandoned my unfortunate 
\ property and all thoughts of being 
a farmer. 

Having thus disposed of most of 
my goods and chattels, mortgaged my farm, (and I never raised the mort- 
gage or anything else off it), satisfied all creditors who 
wouldn't or couldn't afford to wait, I put- myself inside 
of a uew suit of clothes presented by my steadfast Elko 
creditor, and broke out once more into the world. 

I drifted on, hunting fortune in every promising 
locality, but finding poor pickings until I reached Ogden 
Station, Utah Territory ; there I struck a "pay streek," 
as the miners call it, by being again employed on police 
and watch man duty by the railroad company. 

My wages were good and pay prompt ; quickly as I 
earned money I remitted it my Elko friend to pay off the 
balance due him and sundry debts to others. I spent little 
or nothing for myself, except to procure what I absolutely 
required. 

A few months only of this life and I felt like a new 

man. I had a Well paid position, knew my employers 

were satisfied with me ; was free of debt, free of care, free 

iie-ittted. .of sorrow, and free of a girl who would have married me 

when she caret! nothing for me, because she thought I had a little money. 

What big blessing cropped up from those frost bitten potatoes. 

We just can't always tell, " What will the harvest be." 




CHAPTER XXXI. 

ON THE PLATFORM AT OGDEN". 

I was mighty well fixed at Ogden; there were certain well understood 
and plain duties to be performed, and so that these were properly executed I 
was allowed to choose ray own ways and means of effecting them. 

On the arrival of trains on the Union Pacific line, Ogden being its ter- 
niinus, I had to attend to transferring the passengers whose route was still 
further to the cars of the Central Pacific Road. Here the smattering I 
had of many languages served me well, and I collected gossip from almost 



1U 



every corner of the earth through the medium of the many emigrants com- 
ing under my notice and questionings. 

I blundered into this well paid position by what I at first considered a 
side lick-fronf my old ill luck. 

When I first arrived there and was taken on by the company, I was 
carried on the roll of the car superintendent, and all the rolling stock 
arriving and standing over at that station was my charge. I had to go 
through the cars, look after their condition, lock them at night, etc. 

The boss under whom I then served was, one night, discovered by me 
in strange company in the car under circumstances which were plainly no 
part of his duty. I should certainly have held my tongue about the mat- 
ter, but he seemed to think it necessary to take time by the forelock and 
try to muzzle me. The day after my discovery of the gentleman in 
flagrante delicto I received my discharge through his hands. 

!Not feeling disposed to be bounced in so summary a manner, I re- 
ported all the facts and results 
as far as they affected me, to the 
station superintendent, James 
Campbell, and awaited action 
from higher authority. In a few 
days a decision was rendered, 
my former boss was shipped, I 
was re-employed and given a 
position as station or platform 
police. 

From the time of the ill luck 
that turned out to be good luck, 
the current of my fortunes 
seemed to change. 

I was now master of trans- 
fer, looking after all the emi- 
A guardian angel. grants. Daily and hourly were 

incidents occurring in my life, but I can only mention a few here. 

The railroad station was much frequented by gamblers, ticket scalpers, 
swindlers of every degree and " bad men " generally. It was my business 
to keep these gentleman away from the depot and its regular legitimate 
patrons, and I adopted all manner of expedients to do so, using force only 
when necessary. 

There was one scalper, who by pleasant treatment sometimes, and 
again by threats, I had controlled for quite a time ; he was called " Big 
Steve," and was a perfect specimen of the Western rough,' over seven feet 
high, and "a shooter." 

Steve and I got along with average amiability, until one day, when he 
had gotten outside of too much tangle foot, crazy head whiskey, he con- 
cluded to come to an understanding with me. 

I was informed that " Big Steve is looking for you and swears he will 
not be bluffed off the platform any longer by that big Dutchman." 

And sure enough, I soon spied my man howling drunk, with pistol in 
hand and mouth full of curses, at one end of the long platform. 

Dropping between two lines of cars, I made my way under their cover, 




115 




until I got near to him and took up position where my body was well 
covered by a pile of boxes and trunks. 

Soon he came up directly in 
front of where I was secreted, 
and much to his dismay he 
was "fetched up, all stand- 
ing," with my six-shooter 
pointing directly at his face, 
while my own arm and head 
projected from behind the 
baggage barricade. 

" Throw down that pistol 
and put up your hands ! " I 
shouted, 

Steve was staggered by 

that sight worse than by his 

whiskey, but he could do 

nothing. I "had the drop on 

him," and he obeyed orders. 

That finally settled Big 

Steve, he was quiet as a lamb 

ever after with me. The 

lessee of the depot restaurant 

for the interest I always 

manifested for the good of 

" put up your hands ! " his establishment made me 

welcome to my board, which was very welcome to me, and the "run of 

the place." 

He employed many men, and I was convinced that some of them 
robbed him of provisions he bought to use in his business ; such also was 
his opinion. I watched certain of his employees until I had caught them 
" dead to rights," and took them with their plunder before their master. 
This caused these men to become my enemies, and they vowed to drive 
me away. , 

In accordance with such resolution, three of them, coats off and 
sleeves rolled up, came up to me and announced their intentions of giving 
me, first, an unmercif ul thrashing, and second, notice to quit. 
I took Western methods of meeting the question. 
With revolver at full cock and arms length, I backed into a secure 
position and opened parley. 

"Look here," said I, "you want me to apologize to you fordoing 
my duty, to take a licking, and to get out." 

" That's just what you got to do " answered their spokesman. 

" And that's just what I aint going to do, nary one of the three " said I. 

" If you had come one at a time I'd have given you a chance to get 

even, but now I'm going to ask you a question, which one of you wants to 

die first, for the one that steps another pace forward will get the roof of 

his head bio wed off. Do you hear me !" 

These fellows were all Mormons, and believed that when they died 
they would go straight to glory and Joe Smith, but they didn't want to 



116 



pay a visit to Smith just then, and they backed out and left me alone ever 
after so far as regarded violence.- 

But they " had me up " before a Mormon Alderman, Walter Thomp- 
son, and on the oath of three Mormon cowards this Mormon " Justice " 
dispensed "Mormon Justice " to me, fining me $25 and costs for flourish- 
ing a deadly weapon and threatening the lives of several valuable citizens, 
as he called these fellows. 

He also bound me over in bail of $200 to keep the peace for one year. 
I did not wish to ask anyone to become my bondsman, and having a lot of 
mining stock, wildcat and worthless, I offered to deposit this with him as 
security in lieu of bail. He took it and the scrip proved of more value to 
me in that way than I ever expected it to be in any maimer. 

On another occasion I came near getting into much more serious 
trouble through over zealous and hasty exercise of my police functions. 
One day a gentleman with his family, including a well grown young lady, 
alighted from the California train. 

Before the arrival of the cars a carriage had drawn up near to the 

station and a young man who had come in it was walking about the platform. 

This young man hurried to the just arrived young lady, seized her and 

her satchel, rushed to the carriage, both were bundled in, the driver 

whipped up his horses and away they went. 

The old gentleman and remainder of his family were frantic; like 
Shylock of old, he shouted, 

" My daughter, my money ! " 

"They have stolen my daughter! Stop them! Stop them! I'll 
give a thousand dollars to whoever will stop them." My duty and in- 
terest both prompted me to put my best foot forward and work for glory, 
money, and the preservation of the law. 

I travelled after that carriage at a lively rate, by cutting through 
mud piles and across lots. I intercepted the vehicle and ordered them to 

halt, and, on no attention 
being paid to my summons, 
I sent two shots flying into 
the top of the carriage with 
the full intention of hurting 
somebody, for I firmly be- 
lieved that a violent abduc- 
tion and robbery was being 
carried out. 

The team soon left me 

behind and when I next 

caught up with it the horses 

by duty, virtue, and cash incited, were standing before the 

house of a Mormon Bishop, and inside the young man, with the perfectly 

willing young lady were being married as fast as words could join them. 

An Ogden policeman, stationed at the door, told me I had better go 
back where I belonged, and I had just made up my mind that the job had 
been "put-up" beforehand and very nicely carried out when papa, 
mamma, and the rest came panting and puffing to the spot. 

The sight of the old gentleman put me in mind of the promised re- 
ward and I delicately hinted that though I was not entitled x to the full 




11' 



thousand dollars promised, I thought three hundred would be a fair pro- 
portion for my efforts to carry out his desires and my success in running 
the party down. 

The unappreciative Californian reviled me in very strong language 
and called me all sorts of names for trying, as lie said, my " best to shoot 
his daughter.-' 

I was forced to return to the station with, to use a common simile, 
"my tail between my legs," minus any reward but the consciousness of 
having tried to do my duty, and to endure the laugh that all hands kept 
up, long and loud, at my expense. 

For the tramps that passed my way, and many they were who hobbled 
up to that platform, I had a fraternal tenderness which even the stern de- 
mands of duty could not altogether suppress. 

It was "a cold day " for the "hoofer" when he did not transfer a 
quarter from my pocket to his own dirty fist, and under all circumstances 
he received a square fill up from the broken scraps I could always obtain at 
the restaurant. 

From one end of the line to the other the tramps on that route knew 
Big Dutch Hans, the Policeman of Ogden Station, and swore unanimously 
that he was a "jolly good fellow, safe for a quarter or square meal any- 
time." 

One of this ignoble Brotherhood got the best of me and taught me a 
lesson in my old " profession " which is too good to pass over in my rem- 
iniscences. 

He was a fellow countryman, another wandering Dane, and a most 
pitiful object when I first spied him, hollow, ragged, limping, and bare-' 
footed, my heart went out to him. 

I took him in and fed him, got him to clean himself as much as his 
principles would allow him to indulge in such performance, took off my 

feet and gave him the good, almost new, 
boots I had on, I contenting myself for 
the time with an old pair I had at the De- 
pot ; and, in his case, I increased my cash 
donation to the sum of $1. 

The food had braced him up, the 
slight washing he gave himself (only to 
oblige me) proved that he had a white 
skin underneath all its covering of dirt, 
the boots enabled him to step out firmly.. 
But the cash ! The cash transmogri- 
fied him entirely; he was a new man 
throughout. Immediately he began to 
patronize me, asked me over to take a 
drink (to be paid for with my money) 
with an air of condescension which plainly- 
said, " you see I ain't too proud to drink 
giving my boots. with you even if you are only a common 

policeman," and then waving me a lordly adieu he started into Ogden. 

A few hours later I saw my tramp returning, my dollar was inside his 
skin in the shape of whiskey, likewise also two more dollars worth of the 
same commodity was inthe same "tank," that sum having been realized 




118 



by him from the sale of my boots to a Mormon who had a keen eye for a 
good bargain. 

Not drunk was my tramp, three .dollars worth of even Utah whiskey 

could not "fetch him that way," 
but he felt good, and when he halted 
his bare feet before me, and I indig- 
nantly asked, ' ' Where are my boots, 
what have you done with them," he 
cooly replied, 

" Sold 'em of course, old cock ! 
Why what a bloomin' fool you must 
be to think I could go beggin' an' 
git anything with a pair o' boots 
like them on." 

" By-by, Bobby, see you later; " 
he waved me a farewell and was off. 
. This is one of the charities I 
regret having bestowed, but I had 
about that much fun over the fel- 
low's impudence, and life was going 
getting a blast. too easy with me those times for 

me to worry over trifles. 




CHAPTER XXXII. 
COPIOUS, CURIOUS, COMICAL, COURTSHIPS. 

I was so pleasantly fixed at Ogden, so well contented and so over- 
stocked with blessings, that I began to feel as though I had more than my 
share, and I cast about for a partner with whom to divide my joys. 

The old saying that "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," is 
continually verified when the matrimonial fever gets hold of a likely subject. 

Spite of my unlucky speculations in that line, or unfortunate attempt 
to enter into it, I was prepared to endorse the scriptural doctrine that it 
"is not good for man to be alone," and I was impatient to get into double 
harness. 

I was surrounded by people of the Mormon faith, and many were the 
efforts made, not exactly to convert me, for, as I was nothing in a creed 
sense, I could not be converted ; but to bring me into the. Mormon fold, 
to initiate me into the first mysteries, so that in time I could develop into 
a full blown saint with any number of wives I desired. 

I "couldn't see it." Somehow, there was a kind of "strongness" 
about the Mormon doctrines and practices that, when it was proposed that 
I should swallow them whole, rendered me of the opinion that they were 
too rich for my stomach, and I steadily refused to take the pill even though 
it was sometimes offered with a very nice sugar coating. 

Matrimonially inclined, however, I was and I kept my "whether eye" 
open for the right craft to come sailing along, when I determined to board 
and compel her surrender at all hazards. 

There was a certain buxom, good natured widow, £To. 4 of a Mormon 
bishop, to whose charms and very substantial attractions I gave serious 
consideration for some time. This widow, who had been the proud one- 



119 



quarter wife of a now departed saint, was willing to become Mrs. Hans 
Lykkejseger, and to bestow upon me herself, two children, and sundry 
worldly goods, house, Cattle, etc., which would have quite set me up in 
the world, but she insisted that I should "pass through the water," in 
other words, be baptized in and become a disciple of the Mormon Church. 

I wasn't willing to " go through the water " for the widow and, as the 
sporting papers say, u the match was declared off." 

And I kept looking around. Many were the fine girls I had joking 
confabs with as I met them in the trains or at the depot, when, in dis- 
charge of my police duties I had to see that they were properly started for their 
destinations, and it often entered my mind that in one of these encounters 
I should find my fate, " We met by chance," can be sung with truth. by 
more loving couples than most people fancy. 

Though continually I saw hundreds of pretty faces'that were pleasant 
to look upon, yet I never got a square call, until one day, passing through 
the train as usual, I spied, sitting quietly by the window, a clear skinned, 
rosy cheeked, big, bright, honest eyed, plump young girl, good looking as 
to looks, and looking good as to mental and moral attributes, strength, 





MASHED. 



GRETA. 

health, grace and modesty, w T ere shown in every movement and intelligence 
in every feature. 

The one-quarter wife, and now widow of the departed bishop, was 
knocked out of mind completely. 

T was dead gone, "mashed." 

I u went for 1 * that quiet damsel who was setting so demurely at the 
car window just " saying nothing to nobody." 



120 

My official station of course permitted me to enter into conversation 
with her, without the least appearance of impertinence on my part, or im- 
propriety on hers. 

"Where are you going?" I asked, I did not then know that I was re- 
peating the first words of an old English song, or I might have added the 
balance and said, "My pretty maid ! " 

My official dignity, my evident desire to please and attract her atten- 
tion, and the well displayed personal charms which my bulky body made 
prominent, neither dismayed, overawed or fascinated the quiet young lady; 
nor did she seem to be the least inclined to cultivate my acquaintance. 

I had addressed her in English, and in answer received a decidedly 
short : 

"Nix verstach! " 

" Oh," said I, " I see you are a German. " 

Now the Germans are not liked by some nations of this earth, and the 
country from which this maiden came was one where they are particularly 
detested. 

"No, I am not," was fired at me very sharp, with much emphasis on 
the " No" and the " Not ; " and then she added : 

" I am a native of Denmark." 

And I crowed ! here was luck ; tons of it ! 

Quickly I claimed my rights as a fellow countryman, and in the pleas- 
ure of meeting a stranger who could speak her mother's tongue, the pretty 
maid relaxed somewhat in her stern guardedness of demeanor. 

" She was going to join her brother in California," she told me. 

I flew around like an old hen with only one chicken, got her coffee, 
water, dinner, anything and everything, and I made as big a fool of myself 
generally, as men always do under such circumstances, and women never. 

During the time that elapsed before the train started I was enabled to 
have considerable chat with Greta as I shall now call her. 

At last I grew sufficiently bold to ask her if she could not be induced 
to stop in Ogden and keep house for me. 

My answer came quickly. 

"No, sir, I don't know you or anything about you. You and your 
town are alike strange to me, and you are too young a man for any girl to 
serve in the capacity of housekeeper." 

Then I came out with the truth and told her I was looking for a 
housekeeper who would, by matrimonial contract, be joint partner and 
houseowner, and I pressed my suit with all the powers of fascination and 
language that I possessed. 

But Miss Greta sat unmoved by my eloquence and remained immova- 
ble in every sense until the train moved her onward in her journey. 

I had gotten in the station an envelope addressed to myself and 
properly stamped, under pretence of anxiety to learn that my fair country 
woman had arrived safely at her destination. I asked her to take it, and 
when she reached her brother's home, to please enclose a few lines announc- 
ing such fact, and drop the letter in the post-office for me. 

She didn't make any rash promises one way or the other, but she took 
the envelope. 

Then I chuckled over my sly proceedings, and thought what a sharp 



121 

fellow I was to thus lay the foundation of a correspondence with my pretty, 
innocent, unsuspecting little Danish Greta. 

Just as if she didn't know the meaning every move I made, and laugh 
at me for a clumsy blunderer to boot ! 

"Well, she was " gone from my gaze like a beautiful star," and though 
I thought of her very often, and wondered and hoped that I should hear 
from, perhaps see her, yet my passion did not cause me to neglect my busi- 
ness, meals, or the steady prosecution of another little courting match I 
had on hand at that time. 

There was a certain Mormon, and he had a little wife ; and the little 
wife had a good lump of a saucy sister named Sally, and I had been 
" sparking " Sally most industriously with fair success for some months.'' 

A bird in the hand is worth a whole flock on an unknown brother's 
farm away off in California, so I did not cut loose from Sally by any means. 

The Mormon brother-in-law of Miss Sally desired to cultivate a still 
closer relationship with the fair one, he destined her to become wife No. 2, 
and wife who was No. 1, and at 'this time the only one, earnestly desired 
that I should marry her sister and thus remove temptation from the way 
of her fickle and over matrimonially inclined husband. 

Sally also preferred to be the first and all in her married life, so she and 
the lady of the house always made me welcome, and I took care' to give 
the Mormon Boss no chance to carry out his desires towards me as indi- 
cated by his black looks when we met. 

It was about six weeks after I had met and, all too soon, parted with 
Greta, when back came my envelope, end in it a few simple words, telling 
me of her safe arrival and thanking me for attentions bestowed. 

Then I chuckled again, and spent time, ink, and brains in my very 
best attempt at penmanship, composition, courtesy, and blarney in answer- 
ing the dear little note. 

To tins I got a reply, and I answered that. 

Then I got another reply, and I answered that. 

And each answer I wrote was longer and stronger and sweeter and 
more " taffy ish " than the one preceding, and at last they grew so red hot 
that it's a wonder they didn't burn up the U. S. Mail, cars, agents, post 
offices, and all. 

I proposed to Greta to come to Ogden and be my wife. 

And she wrote me back that I should send her the money to come on 
and she would do so. 

Glory Hallelujah ! 

But then in crept the gloomy devil of distrust, and I began to think I 
had been too fast. I argued in my newly found timidity and caution: 

'•Maybe the girl ain't so innocent as she looks, there's no such thing 
as knowing these girls, maybe she is going to get the fifty dollars I will 
send to bring her on, and then she, her brother, and some beau will laugh 
at Big Fool Hans, and the way they have made him pay for his blundering 
conceit." 

And so I made an extra double fool of myself by concocting what I 
thought was a very good plan. 

I wrote to her and sent her an order, which on her presentation of it at 
the railroad office near her brother's home, would secure a ticket for pas- 
sage in an emigrant train to Ogden. To the railroad agent at the place 



122 



mentioned I sent instructions to supply such a ticket to such a person as I 
described when she presented her order for it, and that payment therefor 
would be made by the station master at Ogden. 

Then I chuckled again at my cuteness, and I kept on chuckling, and 
presently a reply to my last letter was placed in my hands by the post 
office clerk. 

"If, after asking me to be your wife and helpmate through life, after 
all the professions of affections you have made, and all the expressions of 
reliance you have written ; if, after all these you have so little trust in me 
that you refuse to keep your promise and send to me direct the money you 
offered to pay my passage to Ogden, and have to depend upon my going to 
exhibit myself before station masters in order to get a ticket ; and if, after 
all your liberal offers to support me in comfort, you can only send for your 
much sought wife that is to be, to come to you in a rough, greasy, emi- 
grant's car, you can find some other wife than me, and as you place more 



BEFORE READING. 



AFTER READING. 





dependence on the railroad 
company than on my honor, 
I guess you had better 
marry the railroad company 
for you will never marry 
Greta." 
These were not of 
course the actual words 
used, but <the above was 
the tenor and about the 
tune, and it "knocked me 
stiff." 
i've got my letter. I didn't chuckle so 
much then, I went out and, in a figurative sense I kicked myself until I 
was black and blue. 

I loved the girl ten times more now that she had refused me, almost 
called me a fool, intimated that I was one, and proved that I was one, than 
I did before. 

I wanted to write and explain, but in her letter she told me that she 
should never take a line from me again, and also, that she was going to 
leave her brother's house and go elsewhere. 
So I had lost her, and it served me right. 

But 1 went all the same, and put on double pressure in my courtship 
of sally. 



I'VE GOT THE SACK. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

A PERPLEXED POLICEMAN. 

I courted the fair Sally with frequency and zeal after the set back I 
received from the Danish girl I had seen so little of, thought so much 
about, and from whom I got such a stunning back-hander. 

And Sally took very kindly to the courting. She was young, plump, 
smart — just the least bit tart in temper, with a dash of pepper and vinegar 
in her composition, which added spice to the sparking ; though they 
might have proved rather too high seasoning as a regular diet. 



123 



I had been cultivating Sally before I ever laid eyes on Danish Greta ; 
partly because Sally pleased me, because I was made welcome and com- 
fortable when I called, by both of the sisters, married and single, and 
because it spited the brother-in-law who wanted to be husband-in-fact, to 
see me coming there. 

Though Sally and I were so "thick " that the old gossips said "Big 
Hans was going to many that Sal. Higgins, or if he didn't he'd orter; 
and she'd hook him, sure as shootin." and though I was careful not to 
tell her of my encounter with the beauty of the cars, yet I had not actu- 
ally in my own opinion, committed myself and would never have done so 
had not the message from California blasted all my hopes in that 
direction. 

I knew that I had made a fool of myself, and with the weakness of 
human nature, I wanted to make a fool, of somebody else and so I 
redoubled my attentions to Sally and she was evidently expecting, at my 
every visit, to receive an invitation to become Mrs. Platform Police ; and 
I must acknowledge that so far as actions went, she had a fair right to ex- 
pect such solicitation from me. 

I used often, during the spare hours (I was my own master between 
the arrival of trains), to run up and do a little extra sweethearting — 
courting between courtings, as it were ; and sometimes, through careless- 
ness on my part, a general free-and-easy way we had of " slopping around" 
out there, or some extra dusty work about the depot ; I would make a 
call upon the beauty in working clothes that were decidedly the worse for 
wear and would have been much better for brushing. 

The damsel felt so certain of her coming promotion ; so sure that she 
would soon be sole proprietress of my heart and home, that she began to 
assume some of the privileges of such ownership, and especially objected 
to my occasional decidedly soiled appearance. 

w - 1 wish, Mr. Lykkejreger," she said, one day ■ "that you were more 
careful of your appearance, if not out of respect for yourself, then 
through the consideration you express for me." 

" You come up here to see me, with your breeches in your boots, and 
dirty, torn shirt, no collar, no coat, with your longhair standing seventeen 
ways for Sunday, your beard all uncombed, your face 
looking dirty, even if it ain't, and your whole ap- 
pearance fit for a tramp maybe, but not for a house 
where you call to visit ladies.'* 

I felt hurt and somewhat indignant, especially 
as this was a case somewhat of "pot calling kettle 
black."' for Miss Sally, though never what might be 
called actually slovenly, was yet so prone to en des- 
habille in her working hours, that rt carelessness " 
was a very mild word whereby to express her style. 
^Vhen "prinked up" she was a tight, trim craft, 
other times, " dowdy " is about the figure of it. 

I made no answer to Miss Sally at the time of 
her remonstrance or rebuke, the principal reason 
being that I had none handy to return. I thought 
of several very cutting things I might have said in 
reply, but as these sharp shots did not occur to me 




SAUCY SALLY. 



124 

for some days, and after long consideration, they hardly seemed worth 
firing off and I waited for a chance to get square. 

My mind works slowly — all great bodies do. 

But still I stuck to Sally, and she cottoned to me and her market was, 
to all intents, made ; the final words only being wanting to close the bar- 
gain. For bargain it was more than anything else and we both knew it, 
though the love-making went on as though it was real. 

This was the state of affairs, when, one fine morning, a letter bearing 
a strange post-mark was put in my hands. It was from Greta. 

With a few plain words she stated her object in writing ; she said that 
her brother and his people, with whom she had before lived, and who 
knew of her meeting with, and letters from me, had written her that 
there was a letter in their possession which they were sure was from me, 
but they would not forward it to her. She thought, and correctly, that 
they only wrote this to tease her, and she wanted to be sure about it, so 
she penned her inquiry to me. 

This pen and ink communication from the object of my dreams, sent 
the smouldering flames of love again into active blaze and my blue- 
shirted bosom covered a regular barbecue bon-fire. 

I answered that letter by return of mail, explaining that, rough as I 
was, I had too much good breeding and self-respect, to have ever written 
a line to a young lady who so decidedly forbade me so to do, and whom I 
had so seriously, though unintentionally offended. 

The amount of remorse, hope, fear, explanation, expostulation, des- 
peration, solicitation, admiration, and every other 'ation, I or any one else 
ever thought of, that I put in this and subsequent letters (for the corres- 
pondence was renewed and waxed extensive), need not be recalled or 
recited here. The reader may, probably does know "just how it is," 
himself or herself. 

To make a long story a short one, the course of true love was taken 
up where it had been dropped, the break nicely joined with " soft sawder," 
all rough places smoothed over, and Greta. promised to come to me if I 
sent for her. 

She said nothing about the kind of ticket or mode of travelling ; she 
had given me a liberal education on that point, in one written lesson. 

Overjoyed, I certainly was, proud and almost happy ; not entirely 
serene, however, for there was one fly buzzing about the sweetmeats of my 
coming feast of the soul. It was Sally. What would she say, and worse 
yet, what would she do? I u felt goose-flesh all over me " when I thought 
of Sally. 

Through total loss of knowledge, and lack of invention, how to act, I 
postpone^! making any decrease in my attentions to Sally, and gave her no 
intimation of the change in my matrimonial plans until the very last 
moment. 

It would have walked into a hundred dollars and left a very large gap, 
to have bought the ticket for Greta to come, in style, from her place of 
residence to Ogden, and, if that amount could be saved, it would do much 
towards fitting up with household comforts. 

So I wTote to the Assistant General Superintendent of the road, who 
knew me well, and, after dilating upon my long, faithful, and invaluable 
services for the Company, I told of my coming marriage, explained that, 

i 



125 

in order to prevent the Railroad from being crippled by my absence from 
my post the lady had consented to come to me, and that I wanted, asked 
for and thought I ought to have a free ticket for her use. All of which 
the Station Master at Ogden endorsed as ".O.K." and " approved," and 
forwarded the document to headquarters. 

I got the pass, sent it to Greta, and was notified of the day, hour, and 
train in which to expect her. 

And yet I was not happy. There was Sally I 

I received a dispatch, Greta had started, would be there on time ; that 
meant the next day. 

Did you ever hear " It is best to be off with the old love before you 
are on with the new ; " I never had listened to the proverb but I felt it in 
my bones. 

There was Sally Higgins ! 

That's what was the matter with me. 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 

ALL O. K. 

There was just about twenty-four hours left for me to fight a grand 
battle with Fate and Sally Higgins. 

The moment I was at leisure for a few hours I directed my footsteps 
towards the scene of the pending conflict. 

Fortune favored me, accident suggested cause, despair gave way to in- 
spiration. 

As I drew near to the home of the maiden whose fair hopes I so ruth- 
lessly proposed to forever extinguish, I beheld the lady, all unconscious of 
my presence, in a very loose wrapper, very big and slippy slippers, with 
milk pail on arm, skirts held very high, picking her way over the barn 
yard towards the cow shed. 

The shapely "continuations" no longer appeared as models of grace 
and beauty in my eyes, the stockings seemed loose and baggy, were evi- 
dently not over clean, and from each base and rear of these foot coverings 
bulged, in full sight and development, a round, red, rosy, bare heel. 

I was disgusted as I compared this slatternly sight with a mental pic- 
ture of the trim, neat little woman that was travelling in the direction of 
my home and arms, and I wondered " how I could ever have thought 
that Sally Higgins would suit me." 

Such is life— and men. 

I came to a right about, hurried into Ogden, and put in execution an 
idea suggested by those tattered stockings and the spur of necessity. 

Fixing myself up in " go-to-meeting " style, which meant putting on 
cleaner and better clothes than usual, I went to the largest store in the 
place and purchased one dozen ladies' stockings of excellent quality. 

From every pair of these, except one to put on top of the lot in the 
box, I carefully cut out the heels. 

Then, white-shirted and shaved, I sought Sally. 

I was welcomed to the house, and, after a little time, spent in fixing 
up, the lady appeared in the room where I w r as awaiting her. 

The weather had been discussed and skirmishers of conversation 
thrown out, when, after a time, I brought my masked guns into position. 



126 



With many explanations and assurances that I had no intention of 
taking any undue liberty, I presented the offering I had brought. 

"Don't apologize, Mr. Lykkejseger," answered pleased Miss Sally, as 
she took the well wrapped up package. 

"We know each other well enough to allow of some slight deviation 
from strict rules. Anyhow, I always did think that if a gentleman thought 
anything of a lady, it showed more sense on his part to give her something 
that would be serviceable and lasting, than to be spending money for useless 
trinkets or perishable articles. The stockings axe just what I wanted and 
I'm a thousand times obliged to you.' 1 

" Hem ! Yes ! Just so ! " said I, "I rather thought you did want 
stockings, and so I selected them as a present. I do not know if I got the 
right size, but you can easily see." 

" Oh yes, just wait a moment,'* and she hopped out to the kitchen to 
inspect the gift, to show her sister, and I doubt not, to conclude that the 
final words were now to be spoken ; naturally she thought so, for when it 
comes to giving stockings for presents, things must be pretty well to a 
head— or heel. 

During the few moments of her absence, I was in a quandry, whether 
to cut and run before her return or wait and " see it out." I looked for 
and laid handy my hat ; I put the door wide open, I assured myself that 
the dog was chained up and that the men were all away at work ; I 
counted how many steps would take me into the high road — I had my line 
of retreat all planned out and open, so I waited. 

But not long, Sally was back in a very few moments, a pair of stock- 
ings in each fist, and ten pans more, with only one pair of heels in the lot, 
over her arms and shoulders. She didn't quite know how to take in the 
situation yet, and her action and speech were undecided. I 

"Why, look here! "she said, "what does this mean? there's some 
mistake ; the people at the store must have been giving you damaged 
goods, there's only one pair of these stockings that have heels in them." 
I grabbed my hat, stood on my feet, took another look to be certain 

that all was clear for a 
run. 

"Miss Sally, lam 
aware that you have 
very decided opinions 
in regard to dress and 
personal appearances ; 
more than once you 
have rated me on my 
neglect and want of 
propriety in appearing 
before you in my work- 
ing clothes. You hurt 
my feelings, but I said 
nothing. This morn- 
ing, I wandered up 
this way .to make an 

THE STOCKINGS GET ME " THE MITTEN. 77 ear ]y ca ji upon you. 1 

saw you crossing the yard; you did not see me, your high held dress and 




127 

your low heeled slippers enabled me to study carefully the peculiarities of 
each foot covering. I thought that either from economy or for purposes 
of ventilation you had adopted heelless stockings from choice, for such sec- 
tions were certainly not in either of those articles of which I had such an 
extensive view this morning. This is why I amputated those I bought 
for you. 

The amazement of the girl rendered her speechless for the time it took 
me to shoot off my little speech. 

But she wasn't speechless very long, not very. 

I have remarked before that Sally had a temper ; she showed then that 
she had not lost any of it, that she had a more than ample stock on hand 
and on tongue equal to any and all demands, and she drew upon it in the 
most liberal way to pay me for the "outrage," "insult," "brutality," 
etc., etc. 

I can't, I really can't, do the matter justice. I can't just remember 
what she did and what she didn't say. There was a mixture of red- 
peppers, vitriol, nitro-glycerine, red-hot pokers, tears, tongue-lashings, re- 
proaches, threats, bad-names, scalding water, blazing-eyes, flying finger-, 
nails, erupting volcanoes, spouting geysers, and cyclonious blizzards, and 
stockings that defies description — I give it up. 

She gave me up. She told me to go, never to return. That was what 
I wanted her to tell ine; that was what I was hunting for ; the balance of 
what she told me I received as verbal embroideries, embellishments, and 
figures of speech, incident, but not material to the " sack " I was anxious 
she should give me. 

Hat in hand, hand on door knob, I bowed my adieu. 

" I wish you a very good day, Miss Sallie, and a good-bye also." 

And I skipped. 



CHAPTEE XXXV. 

GOOD. 

Greta came. 

All smiles, plumpness, health, beauty, truthful frankness, and trusting 
innocence, she came. 

And then I was happy. 

I had arranged that her comforts on the journey should be attended 
to and provided for, by communicating with parties at the different stations 
on the route, and good nature, with curiosity to see the girl who was com- 
ing to marry Big Hans, made all my friends along the road very prompt 
in seeking her out. 

I may say here, that, though I was in receipt of a very considerable 
salary and by some private speculations and mercantile ventures increased 
my income, yet, payment of back debts, as before mentioned, had kept me 
comparatively poor, and would continue to do so for some time to come. 

I had written all this to Greta, told her honestly how I was fixed and 
how little we would have at first. 

I make this explanation to show that my sweetheart then, my wife 
now, did not marry me from cool, calculating, mercenary motives. 
Whether I was "all her fancy painted me" or not, she had made up her 
mind that I was a man she could love and trust, and she married me from, 
love and took me on trust. 



128 

Her reply to my confession of poverty was that she had decided and 
promised to marry me and she would keep her word. 

" If we have no bed, we can sleep on the floor." 

" If we have no chairs we can sit on hoxes." 

" If we have no butter, we can eat dry bread, and sweeten it with the 
conserve of content. " 

That's what my true hearted Danish girl wrote me. 

Hadn't I struck luck ? 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

BETTER. 

On her arrival I took Greta to the house of an elderly lady friend, and 
we had a long talk over oar plans and hopes for the future. 

When she had somewhat rested, I proposed that she should take a short 
walk and see the town. 

Together we went out and sauntered through the streets, a very well 
contented and much looked after couple. 

As we walked and chatted, I spied a well known, short, neatly dressed 
gentleman approaching us. 

"My girl," I said, " what did you come here for ? " 

"Don't you know ? " was the reply. 

" Shall we get married ? " I asked. 

" Please yourself and you'll please me," I got in answer. 

"There's a gentleman coming, over there, who can tie us up that 
way," said I; "he's the Methodist minister. " 

"All right," said Greta. 

That settled it. 

So I crossed the road and accosted the parson, told him my sweetheart 
had come on, that we intended to get married, might as well do it at once, 
and wanted him to do the job. 

"I'm just going down to the butcher's to get some meat for dinner," 
said he. I'll be home in half an hour, will that suit you ? " 

"Exactly," said I. 

So I went back to Greta, took her to the widow's house again, and, 
while the minister went to get his meat, I made my arrangements to have 
"my hash settled." 

My own preparations were simple, inexpensive and hurried. 

With that perfectly excusable and all womanly desire for proper wed- 
ding fixings, Greta had all her "things" prepared for the momentous 
occasion, her baggage was hurried up to the landlady's house, and from 
the trunk was taken all the " trotting harness " and paraphernalia peculiar 
to and necessary for the event, and on my return I found my demure little 
grub transmogrified into a most gorgeous butterfly, blooming and blushing, 
sweet and spreading, rosy and ready. 

I bought a paper collar, a pair of cuffs of the same material, articles of 
apparel to which I was little used ; astonished and improved my boots by 
a " shine," gave an extra hist to my breeches, by taking a reef in my sus- 
penders ; my coat was rather short, and the rear section of my pantaloons 
might have been in better repair ; and my wedding costume was complete. 

Greta and I were at the minister's " on time," 



129 



The parson did not seem tlie least excited, or to view the occasion as 
in any way extraordinary. That appeared queer to me. 

I was in a cold sweat, yet hot, red faced, puffing like a porpoise, and 
worse scared, I didn't know at what, than I ever was in battle or fight. 
But I didn't think of running away. 

A housemaid and school-marm were two ready, interested, and sym- 
pathetic witnesses. 

The Minister stood up. 

We did ditto. 

It didn't take much longer, and was far more pleasant than tooth 
pulling. 

I was married. 




AT LAST. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

BEST — AND LAST. 

Mrs. and Mr. Hans Lykkejseger ! 

The newly-wedded couple received barrels and barrels of congratula- 
tions and good wishes ; a very short string could have tied up in a bundle 
all the presents. 

Neither congratulations or gifts came from Miss Sally Higgins. That 
young lady formed the exception to be found in every general rule. 

I have stated that I made some outside mercantile ventures. A gen- 
tleman in California had been for months sending me consignments of 
produce from that State. He came to Ogden, and said: 

"Look here, Hans! you're married now and gDt to look ahead. Do 
you propose to work all your life as a railroad servant, or do you want to 
strike out and make something of and for yourself ? " 

u But I ain't got any money,' 5 said I. 

"I'll tell you what I'll do," spoke up my friend, "I'll let you 
have two thousand dollars' worth of goods on sale; you'll soon build up a 
trade and be independent of the world." 

Though I had been successful in my small dealings while at Ogden, 



130 

yet I doubted my ability to transact trade regularly, my former experi- 
ments and experiences in that line had rendered me cautious. 
" But I ain't got any money," I repeated. 

" Money be blowed!" said my sanguine Calif ornian, " if you have two 
thousand dollars' worth of goods, and can't get store-room and all else 
without money, you ain't the man I took you for! " 

So I consulted with Mrs. L. I always did and always will consult Mrs. 
L., and she never gives w r rong advice. 

The offer was duly and carefully discussed and weighed, pro and con. 
There was the giving up of a perfect certainty, in good wages and steady 
employment, for a very uncertain embarkation in trade, and trade had 
always floored me. 

But I had a partner now, with brave heart, cool head and willing hands. 

"Nothing venture, nothing gain. " Trade won. 

I said good-bye to the Platform and the Central Pacific Railroad with 
regret. My luck had turned from the moment I became connected with 
it. I had found there the hole for which I was the peg. I had been 
treated fairly, generously, and like a man, by every prominent official con- 
nected with it. They were all practical men, every one of them, and they 
were keen to recognize and anxious to reward zeal in their service. 

The Central Pacific Railroad was the conception, and its building the 
work of self-made American men. I cannot take space to mention par- 
ticularly and by name all I would like to, but as a representative of all I 
take Mr. Charles Crocker, big in body, big in heart, big in ideas and big 
in execution. He is a typical American, "Go ahead ^ is his motto, 
"Never say die," is the principle upon which he works; an old 49'er, he 
w r ent to California with an ox team, at a time when people would have 
deemed him insane to have talked of building a railroad over the moun- 
tains, he fought his w r ay against flood and fire; he couldn't be drowned 
and he wouldn't be burned, he fought to the top every time. From con- 
tractor on the road he became an official, through every grade he passed, 
and is now the First Yice President of this grand line, which, had it not 
been for his energy, determination and toil, would never have extended 
beyond the Humbolt river. " Charley " Crocker is a pusher — but it 
don't do for any one to push him. 

I accepted my friend's offer and his goods ; part of the consignment I 
obtained advances upon. For a better market we removed to Salt Lake 
City. 

We did well. We did better. 

And we have been continuing to do better and better and better. 

I have increased in size, property and family. 

My wife, ditto, ditto, ditto ; her increase in value to me has long 
since been beyond computation. 

I was looking for my*Luck, and found HUB. 

Finding HER, I found my LUCK. 

Reader, Good Luck to you, 

Hans Lykkej^eger. 



ALU RIGHTS RESERVED. 





















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